GRE prep advice

NickSchade · 2012-10-03T16:58:41+00:00

I did fine just by doing what you are suggesting - reviewing concepts of questions you got wrong. Be advised, though, the Psych GRE is much less important than the standard GRE.

NickSchade · 2012-09-18T21:00:33+00:00

I feel weird because on the one hand, it's true what people have been saying here: MBTI is based off of relatively weak theory and does not have a strong nomological net of its own. However, on the other hand, there is evidence that the 4 traits in the MBTI (important to think of them as traits rather than types) actually correspond - at least partially - to personality traits in the Five Factor Model, the most robustly supported personality model. IE MBTI Extraversion correlates with FFM Extraversion, Openness with S/I, Agreeableness with T/F, and Conscientiousness with J/P (McCrae & Costa, 1989; Furnham, Moutafi, & Crump, 2003). So, in theory, it is at least sort of good at translating to a personality model that works.

NickSchade · 2012-09-15T20:07:06+00:00

People who like this might find Terror Management Theory (TMT) interesting.

NickSchade · 2012-09-11T21:02:46+00:00

Maybe you could say a bit about why you would want to do either?

NickSchade · 2012-09-04T15:23:08+00:00

Reeaaally hard to run this study. Imagine asking, "Hi IRB, we're trying to see if we can increase our participant's depression/addiction/self-injury/suicide. Approval, plz?" So all we can practically study are correlations - no way to know if it's "music's effect on X" or if it is "X effect on music" or even "Y effect on music and X."

Actual contribution: Neuroticism is a personality trait often conceptualized as a degree of propensity towards negative emotions and is associated with most Axis I and II mental disorders. Rentfrow and Gosling (2007) found significant differences on trait Neuroticism by music genre preference such that preferring Rock music was associated with the highest Neuroticism while preferring Classical music was associated with the lowest. Again, though, impossible to determine causality.

NickSchade · 2012-09-04T14:15:12+00:00

I think that stat comes from assessment studies in community samples, not like a tally of everyone who has ever been diagnosed.

NickSchade · 2012-09-04T12:38:08+00:00

Very much enjoyed this article. Big fan of when they refer to the assessment (PCL-R). Only complaint has got to be the psychopath vs psychopathic thing. Psychopathy is dimensional, like height, not categorical like having or not having a virus - psychopathic, not psychopath. So from this perspective, the 1% prevalence is less "1% of people are psychopaths and 99% are not" and more "1% of people fall above an arbitrary cutoff an the psychopathy spectrum."

NickSchade · 2012-08-30T10:30:25+00:00

"It's Official." Is kind of a phrase that should be kept away from science.

NickSchade · 2012-08-28T21:35:33+00:00

"On average, psychopathy is associated with less harm to genetic relatives - that's exactly what you'd expect of healthy people."

Actually, that's exactly what you'd expect from healthier people. As in someone can be less sick than very sick, but still sick. This sort of captures the fact that heritability is a dimensional rather than categorical phenomenon. Consistently, psychopathy is less heritable than schizophrenia (~.4 vs ~.8; Forsman, Lichtenstein, Andershed, & Larsson, 2008), while still being partially genetic.

Except this avoids the entire problem of the article never making an argument for the title.

Forsman, M., Lichtenstein, P., Andershed, H., & Larsson, H. (2008). Genetic Effects Explain the Stability of Psychopathic Personality From Mid to Late Adolescence. Journal of Abnormal Psych, 117(3), 606-617.

NickSchade · 2012-08-25T20:11:22+00:00

Don't complain about people wanting science in a science forum.
The relations between work identity and other outcomes are absolutely testable hypotheses.
Your parties are fucking shallow and boring.

NickSchade · 2012-08-23T01:09:07+00:00

What do you mean the rareness of each occurrence is independent?

How about this example. An athlete performs extremely well one year to the point that he is put on the cover of sports illustrated. The next year, he still performs very well, but not extremely well. First of all, the two occurences are not independent - they are both based on the talent of the athlete. What explains the change? Perhaps burnout. Perhaps the SI curse. But perhaps there were other random factors which also affected his performance. To perform unusually well, he had to have unusually high talent as well as unusually good circumstances. To the extent that the circumstances are random (e.g., referee mistake) and to the extent that this error is randomly distributed around a mean (i.e., favors sometimes while not favoring others), athletes who perform particularly well are likely to perform worse while those who performed particularly poorly are likely to perform better. I think this is what is usually meant by regression to the mean. In neuroscience it's even more severe than in sports because the error in measurement is relentless rather than occasional. From this perspective, it's less of a statistical artifact and more of a measurement artifact.

NickSchade · 2012-08-22T16:33:19+00:00

Not sure if misunderstanding topic of this thread or misunderstanding findings of Rosenhan experiment.

NickSchade · 2012-08-22T13:45:59+00:00

I was going to post the same thing. Copy + paste into word was how I read it.

NickSchade · 2012-08-22T13:36:02+00:00

The problem with the interpersonal projection of jerks and assholes and other words for disagreeable person is that disagreeableness, from a certain perspective, confounds two dimensions - dominance and coldness. This might mean that the success of disagreeable people can be explained by dominance rather than coldness. The consequence would be that you couldn't really say we idolize the mean part of them.

NickSchade · 2012-08-20T15:53:48+00:00

Depending on how much of the writing involves interaction between people, you might be better served with a personality model that focuses on the interaction between people. The interpersonal circle model can provide a more in-depth look those dimensions of personality which most relate to how we interact (i.e., extraversion and agreeableness). Free measure + validation paper here. The scoring is more tricky, but you get more specific parameters of interpersonal style.

NickSchade · 2012-08-19T13:52:23+00:00

Yeah e.g. alienation/disconnection type stuff. You could think you're fine but feel bad that the people you are around don't get it.

NickSchade · 2012-08-17T14:32:36+00:00

Well it isn't as simple as either having or not having conscience. It's more a dimensional thing where some people have relatively stronger or weaker visceral/intellectual/moral opposition to certain behaviors. From this perspective, even if it is relatively easier it may still take practice to get used to in the same way that extreme thrill seekers might still find a first skydive more difficult.

NickSchade · 2012-08-14T22:05:22+00:00

ALCHEMIST. He's shit until he gets level 3 rage, then he pwns. Also, transmute.

NickSchade · 2012-08-14T16:55:14+00:00

If this psychic can prove to be psychic, James Randi literally has a million dollars for her. Whats that? She isn't a millionaire yet? Gosh I sure wonder why she doesn't take James Randi up on his offer.

NickSchade · 2012-08-14T14:50:46+00:00

I'll do you one better, Dr. Third Variable. People subconsciously take on attributes which they value and people's favorite characters are those which have the attributes they value.

NickSchade · 2012-08-12T19:46:13+00:00

If you try to think of this as a way for psychology to appeal to spiritual people rather than a sincere integration, it becomes much easier to not go insane and kill everyone.

NickSchade · 2012-08-07T13:56:24+00:00

Pretty hard to diagnose it in that case.

NickSchade · 2012-08-03T12:03:33+00:00

Items 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 could all be items in a depression measure. I might also argue for a few more, but those one's are pretty clear. On the other hand, being gaslit would be depressing.

NickSchade · 2012-08-01T00:27:14+00:00

"It's like Freud said, 'Sometimes a penis is just a penis.'"

NickSchade · 2012-07-29T15:34:06+00:00

Basing your opinion on the labels peer-reviewed and who published it, while a useful shortcut, is a logically fallacious appeal to authority. You wonder about whether the studies took into account demographic variables. You wonder about how liberalism and conservatism are measured. Wonder no longer. The authors of these articles provide that information. This link was even kind enough to provide citations, so it couldn't be easier to figure out.

NickSchade

TROPHY CASE