People have often talked about "the cult of Apple", and if a recent BBC TV documentary is to be believed, there could be something in it.

The program, Secrets of the Superbrands, looks at why technology megabrands such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter have become so popular and such a big part of many people's lives.

In the first episode, presenter Alex Riley decided to take a look at Apple. He wanted to discover what it is about the company that makes people so emotional. Footage of the opening of the Cupertino company's Covent Garden store in central London last year showed hordes of Apple devotees lining up outside overnight, while the staff whipped up customers (and themselves) into something of an evangelical frenzy. This religious-like fervor got Riley thinking - he decided to take a closer look at the inside of the head of an Apple fanatic to see what on earth was going on in there.

Riley contacted the editor of World of Apple, Alex Brooks, an Apple worshipper who claims to think about Apple 24 hours a day, which is possibly 23 hours too many for most regular people. A team of neuroscientists studied Brooks' brain while undergoing an MRI scan, to see how it reacted to images of Apple products and (heaven forbid) non-Apple products.

According to the neuroscientists, the scan revealed that there were marked differences in Brooks' reactions to the different products. Previously, the scientists had studied the brains of those of religious faith, and they found that, as Riley puts it: "The Apple products are triggering the same bits of [Brooks'] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith."

Although Rick Ross promotes himself as a professional "cult expert", a review of his educational background shows that quite apart from being anti-Christian (he refers to Christians as "Bible bangers") has no religious educational credentials whatsoever. To the contrary, his only formal education is a high school diploma. Self-aggrandizement and personal financial reward seem to be Ross' primary motive for his attacks on Christians and members of other faiths.

As documented herein, an unbiased review of Ross' activities overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that Ross systematically engages in anti-social and often illegal activity and disguises this in the name of "help." "Deprogramming," which appears to be his main source of income, is such an activity.

Imagine that you're on a small ship. A fire breaks out, the ship sinks, and you and five others pile into an inflatable liferaft. A storm gathers, the seas get rough, and the little liferaft starts to fill with water. Unless you do something, everyone will drown! One man is injured, and it looks like he might die either way. Would you throw him overboard?

In recent years, psychologists have used moral dilemmas like this one to explore the way human beings think about morality. Only about 10% of people, they tend to find, make the rational, utilitarian choice (in this case, killing one man to save five); the other 90% choose to abide by moral rules (here, "Thou shalt not kill"), no matter the consequences. Most psychologists have focused their energy on figuring out why 90% of people make the non-rational choice. But in a new paper, published this summer in Cognition, psychologists Daniel Bartels and David Pizarro ask the opposite question: What's up with the 10% of people who are willing to push an injured man overboard? In "The Mismeasure of Morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas," Bartels and Pizarro arrive at an uncomfortable truth: People who make rational, utilitarian moral choices also tend to have "psychopathic traits."

This complicated group of disorders single-handedly sets society on edge.

Who Does That? Part 1

Part of our goal at The Institute is not only to help survivors heal from the aftermath of a PLR (Pathological Love Relationship), but it is also to help prevent future relationships with pathologicals. In prevention, The Institute helps survivors to spot overt glaring pathology. The overt pathology is easy to identify.

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• Few would argue that mothers who drown their children like Susan Smith or Andrea Yates aren't terribly disordered.
• Those that shoot people they don't know or commit a drive by shooting like the Beltway Snipers Muhammad and Malvo in the Washington D.C. and Virginia areas clearly have pathological motives.
• Those that sexually abuse children and hide the sexual offender like the Catholic Church are the face of evil.
• Horrendous hate crimes that torture hundreds, thousands, or millions of people like war crimes or the Holocaust are pretty easy to figure that severe pathology is behind the motivation of hate like that.
• Or the deranged that break into homes to beat the elderly for money like Phillip Garrett who terrorized those in assisted living facilities have a notable bent of sheer brutality.
• Terrorists who commit the taking of hostages and psychological torture like the infamous Stockholm Bank Robbery (resulting in the term Stockholm Syndrome) are identifiable as probable psychopaths.
• The rapist who preys on the vulnerable or the type of rapist who rapes a wife in front of her own husband is overtly vile.
• Or the violent anti-socials that are frequent gang members or thugs like James Manley who murdered my father.
• Serial killers like Ted Bundy who raped and killed at least 36 women leave no doubt that he was the worst of the worst psychopaths.
• Or the ordering of killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child like schizophrenic/psychopathic Charlie Manson makes our blood run cold.
• Cult leaders who lead hundreds to death like Jim Jones remind us of the power and persuasion of pathology.
• Chronic re-offending domestic violence abusers like O.J. and Mike Tyson convince us that all DV is not treatable and some abuser brutality increases with each crime and are obviously disordered.
• The babbling grandiosity of narcissism as seen in Charlie Sheen reminds us that even the rich and famous carry and display their pack of pathology for all to see.
• Or the robbing of millions of dollars from thousands of people like Bernie Madoff reminds us that not all pathology is physically violent, some do it with panache and a tie on.

These forms of pathology are recognizable by most of society and many would agree that these people are horribly disordered and probably dangerous for life.

But being able to spot pathology in less overt and even frequently hid, yet equally as damaging acts, is where most of us fall short-even professionals in the criminal justice and mental health systems. It's also where survivors of PLR's are likely to trip up yet again since the 'types' of behaviors pathologicals perpetrate can vary causing confusion to the unsuspecting, highly tolerant and emotionally understanding survivor.

Fibbing is tough on the brain. New strategies expose liars by adding to the load

One of my guilty pleasures is the long-running TV show NCIS, a drama focused on the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The hero is a former marine, now Special Agent Jethro Gibbs, a disciplined detective with an uncanny ability to observe and question criminal suspects. Gibbs doesn't say much or display a lot of emotion in the interrogation room - indeed, his cool demeanor is his trademark - yet he is a keen lie spotter.

Psychological scientists are fascinated by real-life versions of the fictional Gibbs. Detecting lies and liars is essential to effective policing and prosecution of criminals, but it is maddeningly difficult. Most of us can correctly spot barely more than half of all lies and truths through ­listening and observation - meaning we are wrong almost as often as we are right. And half a century of research has done little to polish this unimpressive track record.

But scientists are still working to improve on that, and among them is social psychologist Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England. Vrij has been using a key insight from his field to improve interrogation methods: the human mind, despite its impressive abilities, has limited capacity for how much thinking it can handle at any one time. So piling on demands for additional, simultaneous thought - or cognitive "load" - compromises normal information processing. Because lying is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth, these compromised abilities should be revealed in detectable behavioral clues.

Ever felt dismay and a sense of hopelessness when you hear yet another story of animal abuse, domestic violence or teenage bullying? Why are people so cruel?

Many researchers studying aggression and violence find the answers to their questions consistently fall back to a failure of empathy.

What is empathy, how do we get it and why do we need it?

In order to feel empathy, a person must understand another's behavior, be able to take the perspective of another and share another's emotional state. The ability to feel empathy appears to vary from individual to individual, and children learn to regulate this emotion based on a variety of social and cultural factors.

Aggression and violence relate inversely to empathy. Those who abuse their children, for example, score low on measures of empathy. Many researchers believe violent individuals have empathy or perspective-taking deficits and that empathy training is a critical component of treatment programs, the idea being if perpetrators can stop long enough to imagine themselves in the shoes of the victims, the violence can be prevented.¹ Empathy also relates to the degree of attachment people experience with their pets. Those who report strong bonds with their companion animals rate high on empathy scales.² Empathy is linked to a variety of pro-social behaviors (like being caring and helpful towards others) and even success in school and the workplace.3

So if empathy is the key, how do we teach empathy?

Jude Bijou Serves Up the Recipe for a Peaceful Life

After 20 years in the making, the book Attitude Reconstruction: A Blueprint for Building a Better Life by author Jude Bijou has finally hit the bookstores. Recently, the Santa Barbara marriage and family therapist appeared at Chaucer's Books on State Street to explain "how honoring our emotions physically and constructively can without fail, bring us more joy, love, and peace."

In her book, Bijou introduces a blueprint of the mind which is a theory based on her own experiences in life, conversations with clients and colleagues, and meditation among other things. Based on the blueprint, Bijou believes that anybody can turn around negative emotions - sadness, anger, and fear - and instead feel joy, love, and peace. The key is to allow yourself to feel.

New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that people's ability to learn and remember information depends on what they do with their hands while they are learning.

According to a study conducted by Notre Dame Psychology Professor James Brockmole and post-doctoral fellow Christopher Davoli, people holding objects they're learning about process detail and notice differences among objects more effectively, while keeping the hands away from the objects help people notice similarities and consistencies among those things.

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of Memory and Cognition.

Participants in the study were asked to analyze a set of complex geometric patterns in a series of images. Half the subjects did so while holding their hands alongside the images, while the other half held their hands in their laps.

What do a patient with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a basketball star, and an animal in captivity have in common? According to new research from Tel Aviv University, they share a clear behavioral link that reduces stress.

In a new study, Prof. David Eilam and his graduate student Hila Keren of TAU's Department of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences found that repetitive behavior in general - and especially ritualistic-like behavior - is not only a human phenomenon but also one in the animal world. They concluded that ritualistic behavior in both humans and animals developed as a way to induce calm and manage stress caused by unpredictability and uncontrollability - heightening our belief that we are in control of a situation that is otherwise out of our hands.

Amazon.com, the books-to-diapers-to-machetes Internet superstore, is a perfect snapshot of the American Dream, circa 2011.

It grows by the hour, fueled by a relentless optimism that has made America America. First it sold books. Then it realized that buying printed words in bulk, sorting and shipping them was a transferable skill. It has since applied it to anything you could want.

In 2011, for example, I have bought the following from Amazon: a hard drive, an electric shaver, a Bluetooth headset, a coffee machine and some filters, a multivoltage adapter, four light bulbs, a rubber raft (don't ask), a chalkboard eraser, an ice cream maker, a flash drive, roller-ball pen replacements, a wireless router, a music speaker, a pair of jeans and a shoe rack - and, oh yeah, some books. (Disclosure: A book and a long-form article I have written are sold on Amazon.)