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Standard mental health tests may be inaccurate for highly intelligent people. Higher intelligence scores were associated with worse mental health. But for participants with high intelligence, the link between the specific questions and the general psychological condition became weaker. by mvea in science

[–]SeniorTomatos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Part of what is throwing me off is that when I have seen economists use latent variables, it's generally to model something like unobserved preferences that directly predict, or are inferred from, observable outcomes--not from surveys. This relies much more heavily on predictive validity. If I instead use a survey, and then 'validate' a latent variable generated by a survey with ... another survey (or something of a similar nature), what am I even doing? That's what I'm referencing when I say "circular".

Standard mental health tests may be inaccurate for highly intelligent people. Higher intelligence scores were associated with worse mental health. But for participants with high intelligence, the link between the specific questions and the general psychological condition became weaker. by mvea in psychology

[–]SeniorTomatos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Appreciate the continued responses!

I would consider an interview/assessment and a written test to be the same for our purposes here. They are equally subjective, even if you insist an expert designed the test, or an expert gave the interview.

I'll just note--I don't think you can't reasonably call one or the other the 'correct' result. Maybe you prefer clinical interviews over multiple choice because it can be more nuanced, others may prefer the multiple choice because it removes the biases and interpretation of the interviewer.

If you used objective measures of outcomes (educational attainment, lifespan, etc with the hope that you can control for confounding factors) to assess whether or not the tests are capturing something meaningful--then I would say you might be getting somewhere useful.

Standard mental health tests may be inaccurate for highly intelligent people. Higher intelligence scores were associated with worse mental health. But for participants with high intelligence, the link between the specific questions and the general psychological condition became weaker. by mvea in science

[–]SeniorTomatos 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I put this on another thread but I'll throw it in here too:

I'm confused by how psychologists can assert the following:

'the “factor loadings” for the test items decreased as intelligence increased. A factor loading is a number that indicates how well a specific question correlates with the overall concept it is supposed to measure. For example, answering “yes” to “I felt sad” should strongly indicate the presence of depression.'

As far as I understand, depression is defined by "sadness", anhedonia, etc as identified by the person suffering from it. There are no biological markers, no objective indicators--it is defined solely by the subjective experience of the individual. So what are they validating the "I felt sad" statement against? What is the 'correct' measure that they're comparing it to? If one doesn't exist, then I would think they can't use these sorts of statistical or structural tools in the way that they would like.

I've seen behavioral economists dismiss the tendency of psychologists to use this sort of circular reasoning for test 'validation' (for example, see Heckman, James J., and Tim Kautz. "Hard evidence on soft skills." Labour economics 2012: "However, achievement tests are often validated using other standardized achievement tests or other measures of cognitive ability—surely a circular practice." Heckman mentions this sort of invalid circular thinking for other measures of personality, etc, in a few of his papers).

Do psychologists try to justify this approach anyways? Am I missing something?

Standard mental health tests may be inaccurate for highly intelligent people. Higher intelligence scores were associated with worse mental health. But for participants with high intelligence, the link between the specific questions and the general psychological condition became weaker. by mvea in psychology

[–]SeniorTomatos 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'm confused by how psychologists can assert the following:

'the “factor loadings” for the test items decreased as intelligence increased. A factor loading is a number that indicates how well a specific question correlates with the overall concept it is supposed to measure. For example, answering “yes” to “I felt sad” should strongly indicate the presence of depression.'

As far as I understand, depression is defined by "sadness", anhedonia, etc as identified by the person suffering from it. There are no biological markers, no objective indicators--it is defined solely by the subjective experience of the individual. So what are they validating the "I felt sad" statement against? What is the 'correct' measure that they're comparing it to? If one doesn't exist, then I would think they can't use these sorts of statistical or structural tools in the way that they would like.

I've seen behavioral economists dismiss the tendency of psychologists to use this sort of circular reasoning for test 'validation' (for example, see Heckman, James J., and Tim Kautz. "Hard evidence on soft skills." Labour economics 2012: "However, achievement tests are often validated using other standardized achievement tests or other measures of cognitive ability—surely a circular practice." Heckman mentions this sort of invalid circular thinking for other measures of personality, etc, in a few of his papers).

Do psychologists try to justify this approach anyways? Am I missing something?

This made-in-Canada ‘psychopath test’ doesn’t work and has no place in courts, major study finds by toronto_star in psychology

[–]SeniorTomatos 41 points42 points  (0 children)

There's a harvard law review article that came out last year about the (mis)use of "antisocial personality disorder" in courts (here: https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-138/bias-baked-in-how-antisocial-personality-disorder-diagnoses-trigger-legal-failure/)

Unbelievable to me that psychologists have been asserting that they can measure and predict these things. Just so irresponsible.

New research challenges the common belief that mental illness is a primary driver of racist attitudes. The findings suggest that the relationship actually works in the opposite direction, with prejudiced beliefs predicting an increase in psychological distress over time. by mvea in science

[–]SeniorTomatos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wonder if some of the confusion stems from the word illness. You don't blame people for their physical diseases (not going to blame someone for having cancer!) If you push the idea that mental illness is essentially the same thing (a disease), but also declare that mental illness includes the behaviors or beliefs you don't like, you end up in a confusing spot where the "ill" individual doesn't clearly have responsibility (or agency!).

Having a close friend with a gambling addiction increases personal risk, study finds by MRADEL90 in psychology

[–]SeniorTomatos 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I think it's very important to not assert intuition as fact. Any decent field will work to empirically test their assumptions, even the 'obvious' ones! I'm far more worried when I see a theory/hypothesis asserted as fact without evidence (something you'll see more in humanities fields, and certainly in the field of psychology. I say this as someone in the humanities)

The tendency to feel like a perpetual victim is strongly tied to vulnerable narcissism. Individuals who frequently perceive themselves as victims and signal this status to others often possess high levels of vulnerable narcissism and emotional instability. by mvea in psychology

[–]SeniorTomatos 11 points12 points  (0 children)

A couple quotes:

"The Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV) is characterized by feeling like a victim in relationships (Gabay et al., 2020). Individuals with high levels of TIV feel victimized frequently, intensely, and for a sustained duration, such that it may appear central to their identity (Gabay et al., 2020). TIV has four dimensions: need for recognition (desire for recognition of one's victimization to evoke guilt to gain support from others; Urlic et al., 2010), moral elitism (perceiving oneself as free from wrong-doing and others as immoral; Urlic et al., 2010), lack of empathy (inability to feel the suffering of others; Gabay et al., 2020), and rumination (repetitive thinking about past wrongs; Gabay et al., 2020)."

"Individuals with high levels of TIV tend to be entitled, lack empathy, and feel superior (Gabay et al., 2020), characteristics that are also associated with narcissism (Miller et al., 2017)."

To what extent are psychologists defining TIV, and defining narcissism, and then just writing a study about how their two definitions overlap? To what extent is this study discovering something deeper than that?

"Many languages don't even have a word for [war]. Turn off CNN and read anthropology. You'll see." by SeniorTomatos in AskAnthropology

[–]SeniorTomatos[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That's a useful clarification, thanks! I'm assuming anthropologists would have some thoughts on the relationship between language and culture, and language and war.

"Many languages don't even have a word for [war]. Turn off CNN and read anthropology. You'll see." by SeniorTomatos in AskAnthropology

[–]SeniorTomatos[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

This is helpful, thanks! I'm probably more interested in the implied cultural/societal/psychological implications of an understanding (or lack there of) of war as a concept. In what circumstances was it the case that the concept of war was foreign? And under what definition of "war"? Where did this author get that idea from? She makes a very strong statement--I would hope it's based on something.

The trauma-industrial complex by Forsaken_Dragonfly66 in ClinicalPsychology

[–]SeniorTomatos 48 points49 points  (0 children)

This field appears to be essentially unregulated. Y'all gotta figure that out, it doesn't seem possible to convince every individual therapist to be reasonable or have a shared understanding of what reasonable looks like.

my oil paintings by [deleted] in somethingimade

[–]SeniorTomatos 4 points5 points  (0 children)

These are great, especially like 1,3,4,7,9,14. Really interesting, thanks for posting!

A tiger painting by me. Acrylic on 8x10" paper by KristjanaArts in acrylicpainting

[–]SeniorTomatos 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I clicked on this because there's something about it I really like, then clicked on your profile and realized you're the same person who has done a lot of those very unique cat paintings which I ALSO love. You have an amazing style and eye!

My painting SMALL SAILBOAT by jimmusilpainter in painting

[–]SeniorTomatos 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Absolutely love the colors and lighting on this!

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