Psychiatry and Psychology

The benefits of play seems pretty obvious in terms of mental and physical development. In most animals it is predominant during developmental stages and declines with experience. The spatial element seems equally obvious as it primarily takes place in a designated safe environment. Play also seems less casual than other predispositions. What I mean by that like other primary instincts it appears obligatory. This could be seen as pointless hyperactive behavior in the immature. Like all behavior there is most likely not one explanation for play but a variety of fitness benefits. What is interesting however is the emerging idea of the coevolution of culture and the…

Hello, this is my question. You are welcome to add links to studies, preferable ones with more than just a few participants. Thanks!

If there is a disorder and you exhibit half of the traits required to be classified with that disorder and a little more than half to not have it what does that say? Also if there is many disorders you border on but never have enough to fit the criteria what does that mean? Does that mean you are sane?

I don't know about you guys but I have a really hard time controlling myself, the primitive animal in me is much stronger than my higher logical self, unfortunately. I think its human nature to have a tendency to favour/be controlled by what has worked for millions of years to keep us alive. ie eat the high fat high salt high sugar food and don't eat the salad, it takes real self control to do the intelligent thing and not the instinctual thing. Unfortunately for me I was never brought up with 2 strict parents to teach me discipline, and I was scolded alot for my failures/just generally. Giving me a combination of low self discipline/self control and negative self tal…

No free won't either. There Is No Free Wont: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit (Filevich, Kühn & Haggard, 2013) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3572111/ Without the power to create options or choose among them, what does consciousness do? Free won't as explained by an outdated blog post: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201004/free-will-is-real-its-mentalistic-not-mechanistic I will try to summarize the research paper while using as much of their words as possible. Introduction and Methods sections: They "operationalized inhibition as a transient process, characterised by delayed responding, rather th…

Philosophical Question Is it not better to reserve discretion concerning pastel boxes than to ponder hallucinatory boxes. Who needs hallucinatory boxes anyway? Author: David Elkins

Are you suffering from the online disinhibition effect? Or have you encountered people who are? Wikipedia : "The online disinhibition effect is a loosening (or complete abandonment) of social restrictions and inhibitions that would otherwise be present in normal face-to-face interaction during interactions with others on the Internet. This effect is caused by many factors, including dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority." Example of youtube quotes: Thgerasd," after watching this video, I have come to the conclusion that you are still fat". What's wrong with h…

Loyalty is an important thing. It means that your friend/family/coworker has your back and wont throw you under the bus for any little thing. Now there is something on the other end of the spectrum which is known as Narcissistic personality disorder which his characterized by doing stuff like abusing others to make yourself look good. No one wants to be around someone who does this stuff since they are terrible people. People who are codependent need another person to cling to in order to mentally well. However traits which a codependent are suppose to have are really very selfless. Now disloyalty is not GOOD since trust is what creates bonds. From an evolutionary stand p…

It is often said that depression is caused just by a chemical imbalance in the brain, so all we have to do is drug ourselves to restore the imbalance to the proper level, and we should be fine. But the problem with this is that depression is highly correlated with adverse life events, and there is no reason why people who have suffered 'depressing' events in their life should also just happen to be the same people who have a chemical imbalance in the brain. If we assume that the depressing life events cause the chemical imbalance, then the chemical imbalance is no longer the ultimate cause, but just the effect of the life event, just the way moping about is caused by sa…

What exactly are emotions and can we quantify them ? I would define emotion as the motor expression of nervous impulses. eg) anger / mirth etc. Scientists have tried to quanify emotions and while earlier it was thought that there were 3 different flavours, now it has been revised to 7. It this a realistic model ?

I heard about an experiment where 4 monkeys were experimented on and the test involved experimenting with how the monkeys react to certain actions made by the other members of the group when sprayed with water. I was trying to find the article about this, but all I got was information that stated that the experiment was fake. Does anyone know what the name of the experiment was and where I could find the article about it? Or is it actually fake?

I know what is psychologically well according to school. Psychologically well for school means your over zealous, always smiling, when someone hits you that you cry, when someone calls you a mean name you cry, when someone dies in a movie you cry, when someone gets in a fight with you that you are upset about it for a week. If you are able to make a cold calculated decision under a lot of pressure that means something is wrong with you for not letting the pressure get to you. Now I could see where these traits would help in high stress jobs such as military or cop or security. However when you do this in school you are considered a sociopath and a possible threat to o…

I've heard this a few times, that people with depression see the world in a very objective way. Can anyone explain what precisely this means?

I have checked some Psychology books but i don't see this topic anywhere except in one book that i don't trust much.. Have seen questions regarding it in past papers. So I need to know about it. Questions in Past Paper: Q - Comment on recent trends in Psychology as viewed by Behaviorists. Q - Comment on Recent Trends in Psychology, duly supported by factual data. This is what I found in one book about Trends: Electic Psychology, Psychology of Cyberspace, Energy Psychology, Scientology, Critical Psychology, Kinesiology... I highly doubt that's the answer.. so help me out in here.. thanks

Hey guys, I'm conducting a survey for my final thesis. Please help and fill out my survey! Thank you for your time https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WRY6DP8

Narcissists must get narcissistic supply which is "Attention" however if you think about it all people desire some amount of attention. If a person has all the Symptoms of a narcissists other than stuff which is outwardly harmful such as self entitlement, or purposely abusing others, lack of responsibility, can they still be classified as one? Or would they be classified as something else entirely? http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201311/6-signs-narcissism-you-may-not-know-about The symptoms listed here don't really list that. Also how does one know when they are unique? A person can be told they are stupid by society but are really th…

The phenomenon I'm thinking of is an aspect of human behavior. It's the one where a person doesn't adhere to his expected, practiced rehearsed format when the circumstances behind the event change unexpectedly. Does that make sense? Well, here's an example: In the award-winning book "The Giver," Jonas is expecting to be called to become a legal adult, and subsequently be given his job assignment, immediately after the person with the number "Eleven-Eighteen," since he is "Eleven-Nineteen." He was preparing to walk on-stage in the specific style he had been practicing for months. However, much to his surprise, the person conducting the ceremony skips over him a…

I was reading this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikki-gloudeman/as-a-straight-woman-why-d_b_5759288.html?utm_hp_ref=celebrity&ir=Celebrity and this part got me interested, the writer of the article says she looked at the recently leaked nude pictures of Jennifer lawrence and Kate Upton and then says: I'd particularly be interested in the input of female posters, I assume there are at least a few, but also the males, I'm curious as to: a) why straight women look at pictures of other women naked (there's a theory on that in the article, and I can kinda buy that, that they look at it the way straight men look at other men's physiques, becaus…

Do you think IQ tests are a useful way to measure intelligence; or do you think they're useful at all?

This is sort of vague, but what I'm looking for is examples of types of "cognitive behavior" where people are trying to accomplish something in a way that, on the face of it, appears to have some logic to it and make sense, but in practice is not the correct way to "cognitively behave." I know that sounds vague, but a perfect example of it is the pleasure paradox. This is a well known one that many people have commented on. The pleasure paradox is, of course, the idea that if you want to be happy (or have pleasure) you should do things that give you pleasure or you should aim to do things that are fun or that should make you happy, so this makes sense on a certain lev…

There is nothing magical about intuition. Intuition is simply the brain using inductive reasoning and massive parallel processing to determine the reasonableness (plausibility) of certain possibilities. You suspend your disbelief long enough to get a "feel" for how well the idea "fits" with everything else you know. Does it conflict with other things you know? Does it require that you make many other assumptions? Or would it, in fact, explain things that would otherwise be unexplained? Intuition can't tell you whether a given idea is true or not, but if used properly, it does tell you whether that idea is reasonable or not. Occam's razor states that the most reasonable p…

I posted this in a more philosophical thread about forgiveness: I think confirmation bias is inevitable. We like what we like, and we justify a lot of things and constantly maneuver ourselves into situations where we get them. But it's dangerous, because what we like isn't always good for us. I like the concept of karma, I just don't think there's anything magical about it. It's very satisfying and stress-relieving to have many of life's little parts fall into place seemingly just to please you. It feels like magic sometimes though, like motion detecting lights. I understand the mechanism, but I get a little extra thrill when the light comes on just because I w…

So my friend and I were discussing free will and whether or not it exists. He believes free will does not exists because our genes predict what we think, do, etc. and that we aren't really making choices, but being driven by our genetic tendencies. Example: If a person has a gene that makes them inherently good at math, they will naturally follow into a career involved in math. Or if the same person who has the "math-gene" also has a gene that makes them more hands on ("hands on-gene"), then they will follow a career/ lifestyle that suits that gene. There is no choice being made, just an action (by the gene) following an instinctual reaction (natural selection). …

As some of you may know, there are some groups of people who use bondage as a tool for sexual pleasure. It seems though that, unless in cases where one is raping another, that this is completely voluntary for both sides. It sparked my curiosity because I've been wondering what exactly the person who gets tied up gets out of it? Or more specifically, why they would want to be a masochist in the first place? How does the thought of being abused actually arouse a person? I also heard of people who have fantasies of being raped, and this does serve as a source of some sexual pleasure, even though they would not want to be forced in real life. Any thoughts?

If you want to know the disorders you have to either buy the books or go to school. However if you don't necessarily want to have only that as your career it makes no sense to pursue something you are not going to stick with. What are some cheap ways to buy educational material without spending a ton of money? This kind of stuff is so expensive. I found it for 300$-1000s online. You could buy a new computer with that kind of money. Is there a cheaper way to get the DSM 5? If you just want the list of current disorders.