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🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Politics 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Marketing & Advertising 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of science 🔗 Philosophy/Epistemology 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Education

Social facilitation is defined as improvement or decrease in individual performance when working with other people rather than alone.

In addition to working together with other people, social facilitation also occurs in the mere presence of other people. Previous research has found that individual performance is improved by coaction, performing a task in the presence of others who are performing a similar task, and having an audience while performing a certain task. An example of coaction triggering social facilitation can be seen in instances where a cyclist's performance is improved when cycling along with other cyclists as compared to cycling alone. An instance where having an audience triggers social facilitation can be observed where a weightlifter lifts heavier weight in the presence of an audience. Social facilitation has occasionally been attributed to the fact that certain people are more susceptible to social influence, with the argument that personality factors can make these people more aware of evaluation.

The Yerkes-Dodson law, when applied to social facilitation, states that "the mere presence of other people will enhance the performance in speed and accuracy of well-practiced tasks, but will degrade in the performance of less familiar tasks." Compared to their performance when alone, when in the presence of others they tend to perform better on simple or well-rehearsed tasks and worse on complex or new ones.

The audience effect attempts to explain psychologically why the presence of an audience leads to people performing tasks better in some cases and worse in others. This idea was further explored when some studies showed that the presence of a passive audience facilitated the better performance of a simple task, while other studies showed that the presence of a passive audience inhibited the performance of a more difficult task or one that was not well practiced, possibly due to psychological pressure or stress. (See Yerkes–Dodson law.)

🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Paranormal

Nobel disease or Nobelitis is the embracing of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life. It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise, although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals. Paul Nurse, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, warned later laureates against "believing you are expert in almost everything, and being prepared to express opinions about most issues with great confidence, sheltering behind the authority that the Nobel Prize can give you". Nobel disease has been described as a "tongue in cheek" term.

🔗 Books 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Japan

The Mariko Aoki phenomenon (青木まりこ現象, Aoki Mariko genshō) is a Japanese expression referring to an urge to defecate that is suddenly felt after entering bookstores. The phenomenon's name derives from the name of the woman who mentioned the phenomenon in a magazine article in 1985. According to Japanese social psychologist Shozo Shibuya, the specific causes that trigger a defecation urge in bookstores are not yet clearly understood (as of 2014). There are also some who are skeptical about whether such a peculiar phenomenon really exists at all, and it is sometimes discussed as one type of urban myth.

The series of processes through which being in a bookstore leads to an awareness of a defecation urge is something that cannot be explained from a medical perspective as a single pathological concept, at least at present. According to a number of discussions on the topic, even if it can be sufficiently found that this phenomenon actually exists, it is a concept that would be difficult to be deemed a specific pathological entity (such as a "Mariko Aoki disease", for example). On the other hand, it is also a fact that a considerable number of the intellectuals (particularly clinicians) who discuss this phenomenon have adopted existing medical terminology such as from diagnostics and pathology. Borrowing from this approach, this article also uses expressions from existing medical terminology for convenience.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Artificial Intelligence

There have been multiple incidents where interaction with a chatbot has been cited as a direct or contributing factor in a person's suicide or other fatal outcome. In some cases, legal action was taken against the companies that developed the AI involved.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Business 🔗 Politics 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Marketing & Advertising

Serial-position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. The term was coined by Hermann Ebbinghaus through studies he performed on himself, and refers to the finding that recall accuracy varies as a function of an item's position within a study list. When asked to recall a list of items in any order (free recall), people tend to begin recall with the end of the list, recalling those items best (the recency effect). Among earlier list items, the first few items are recalled more frequently than the middle items (the primacy effect).

One suggested reason for the primacy effect is that the initial items presented are most effectively stored in long-term memory because of the greater amount of processing devoted to them. (The first list item can be rehearsed by itself; the second must be rehearsed along with the first, the third along with the first and second, and so on.) The primacy effect is reduced when items are presented quickly and is enhanced when presented slowly (factors that reduce and enhance processing of each item and thus permanent storage). Longer presentation lists have been found to reduce the primacy effect.

One theorised reason for the recency effect is that these items are still present in working memory when recall is solicited. Items that benefit from neither (the middle items) are recalled most poorly. An additional explanation for the recency effect is related to temporal context: if tested immediately after rehearsal, the current temporal context can serve as a retrieval cue, which would predict more recent items to have a higher likelihood of recall than items that were studied in a different temporal context (earlier in the list). The recency effect is reduced when an interfering task is given. Intervening tasks involve working memory, as the distractor activity, if exceeding 15 to 30 seconds in duration, can cancel out the recency effect. Additionally, if recall comes immediately after the test, the recency effect is consistent regardless of the length of the studied list, or presentation rate.

Amnesiacs with poor ability to form permanent long-term memories do not show a primacy effect, but do show a recency effect if recall comes immediately after study. People with Alzheimer's disease exhibit a reduced primacy effect but do not produce a recency effect in recall.

🔗 United States 🔗 Religion 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Alternative Views 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Religion/New religious movements 🔗 United States/U.S. history 🔗 Crime and Criminal Biography 🔗 Religion/Left Hand Path

The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient (and future wife), Michelle Smith, which used the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping lurid claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which afterwards arose throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution.

Nearly every aspect of the ritual abuse is controversial, including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof thereof, testimonies of alleged victims, and court cases involving the allegations and criminal investigations. The panic affected lawyers, therapists, and social workers who handled allegations of child sexual abuse. Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups, including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child advocates, therapists, and clients in psychotherapy. The term satanic abuse was more common early on; this later became satanic ritual abuse and further secularized into simply ritual abuse. Over time, the accusations became more closely associated with dissociative identity disorder (then called multiple personality disorder) and anti-government conspiracy theories.

Initial interest arose via the publicity campaign for Pazder's 1980 book Michelle Remembers, and it was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by coverage of the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors, and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular, and religious conferences as well as through talk shows, sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, which, as one researcher put it in 2017, "involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping paedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers."

Of the more than 12,000 documented accusations nationwide, investigating police were not able to substantiate any allegations of organized cult abuse.

🔗 Psychology

The McCollough effect is a phenomenon of human visual perception in which colorless gratings appear colored contingent on the orientation of the gratings. It is an aftereffect requiring a period of induction to produce it. For example, if someone alternately looks at a red horizontal grating and a green vertical grating for a few minutes, a black-and-white horizontal grating will then look greenish and a black-and-white vertical grating will then look pinkish. The effect is remarkable because, where time-elapse testing is employed, it has been reported to last up to 2.8 months.

The effect was discovered by American psychologist Celeste McCollough in 1965.

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Psychology

Posttraumatic Embitterment Disorder (PTED) is defined as a pathological reaction to a negative life event, which those affected experienced as a grave insult, humiliation, betrayal, or injustice. Prevalent emotions of PTED are embitterment, anger, fury, and hatred, especially against the triggering stressor, often accompanied by fantasies of revenge. The disorder commences immediately and without time delay at the moment of the triggering event. If left untreated, the prognosis of PTED presents as rather unfavorable, since patients find themselves trapped in a vicious circle of strong negative emotions constantly intensifying one another and eventually leading into a self-destructive downward spiral. People affected by PTED are more likely to put fantasies of revenge into action, making them a serious threat to the stressor.

The concept of PTED as a distinct clinical disorder has been first described by the German psychiatrist and psychologist Michael Linden in 2003, who remains its most involved researcher. Even though it has been backed up by empirical research in the past years, it remains disputed as to whether embitterment should be included among psychological disorders. Therefore, PTED currently does not hold its own category in the ICD-10 but is categorized under F43.8 “Other reactions to severe stress”. It cannot be categorized as an adjustment disorder under F43.2, since “ordinary” adjustment disorders normally subside within six months, while PTED is much more likely to become chronical and last for much longer. A condition similar to PTED has already been described by Emil Kraepelin as early as 1915 by the name querulous paranoia as a form of traumatic neuroses, explicitly demarcating it from personality disorders.

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Science 🔗 Academic Journals

The replication crisis (or replicability crisis or reproducibility crisis) is, as of 2020, an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce. The replication crisis affects the social sciences and medicine most severely. The crisis has long-standing roots; the phrase was coined in the early 2010s as part of a growing awareness of the problem. The replication crisis represents an important body of research in the field of metascience.

Because the reproducibility of experimental results is an essential part of the scientific method, the inability to replicate the studies of others has potentially grave consequences for many fields of science in which significant theories are grounded on unreproducible experimental work. The replication crisis has been particularly widely discussed in the field of psychology and in medicine, where a number of efforts have been made to re-investigate classic results, to determine both the reliability of the results, and, if found to be unreliable, the reasons for the failure of replication.

🔗 Internet culture 🔗 Medicine 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Electronic music 🔗 Neuroscience 🔗 Medicine/Neurology 🔗 Medicine/Society and Medicine 🔗 Albums

Everywhere at the End of Time is the eleventh recording by the Caretaker, an alias of English electronic musician Leyland Kirby. Released between 2016 and 2019, its six studio albums use degrading loops of sampled ballroom music to portray the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Inspired by the success of An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011), Kirby produced Everywhere as his final major work under the alias. The albums were produced in Krakow and released over six-month periods to "give a sense of time passing". The album covers are abstract paintings by his friend Ivan Seal. The series drew comparisons to the works of composer William Basinski and electronic musician Burial; later stages were influenced by avant-gardist composer John Cage.

The series comprises six hours of music, portraying a range of emotions and characterised by noise throughout. Although the first three stages are similar to An Empty Bliss, the last three stages depart from Kirby's earlier ambient works. The albums reflect the patient's disorder and death, their feelings, and the phenomenon of terminal lucidity. To promote the series, Kirby partnered with anonymous visual artist Weirdcore to make music videos. At first, concerned about whether the series would seem pretentious, Kirby thought of not creating Everywhere at all; he spent more time producing it than any of his other releases. The album covers received attention from a French art exhibition named after the Caretaker's Everywhere, an Empty Bliss (2019), a compilation of archived songs.

As each stage was released, the series received increasingly positive reviews from critics; its length and dementia-driven concept led many reviewers to feel emotional about the complete edition. Considered to be Kirby's magnum opus, Everywhere was one of the most praised music releases of the 2010s. Caregivers of people with dementia also praised the albums for increasing empathy for patients among younger listeners, although some medics felt the series was too linear. It became an Internet phenomenon in the early 2020s, emerging in TikTok videos as a listening challenge, being transformed into a mod for the video game Friday Night Funkin' (2020), and appearing in internet memes.