Quotes from Elliot Aronson

The American mind in particular has been trained to equate success with victory, to equate doing well with beating someone.

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something in nature that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. Aristotle Politics, c. 328 BC

Aronson's first law: People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy.

The person who is easiest to brainwash is the person whose beliefs are based on slogans that have never been seriously challenged.

What do Hitler's inner circle, Nixon's close advisers, and NASA administrators have in common, aside from the fact that they made terrible decisions? Each was a relatively cohesive group isolated from dissenting points of view.

the more similar a person seems to you in attitudes, opinions, and interests, the more you like the person. Opposites may attract, but they don't stick.

Thus, if passionate love is like cocaine, then companionate is more like a glass of fine wine - something delicious and pleasurable, but with fewer health palpitations and less mania.

News is a form of entertainment .

Perhaps more people would be inclined to take action if, like the stereotypical terrorist, global warming had a moustache.

For example, a teenager may dread going to school with a pimple on his forehead or on a bad hair day because "everyone will notice". Thomas Gilovich and his associates have found, however, that such worries are often greatly exaggerated.