Quotes About Behavior

Most of this book is about the workings of System 1 and the mutual influences between it and System 2.

System 2 is sometimes busy, and often lazy. Indeed, there is evidence that people are more likely to be influenced by empty persuasive messages, such as commercials, when they are tired and depleted.

The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it. The model is constructed by associations that link ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur with some regularity, either at the same time or within a relatively short interval.

His observation was astute and correct: occasions on which he praised a performance were likely to be followed by a disappointing performance, and punishments were typically followed by an improvement. But the inference he had drawn about the efficacy of reward and punishment was completely off the mark.

Dalle prove raccolte risulta che, quando la mente è carica di cifre, si è più propensi a scegliere l'allettante dolce alla cioccolata. Il sistema 1 influisce di più sul comportamento quando il sistema 2 è indaffarato, e ha un debole per i dolci.2

You can see why the common admonition to "act calm and kind regardless of how you feel" is very good advice: you are likely to be rewarded by actually feeling calm and

social influences create significant noise across groups.

Money-primed people become more independent than they would be without the associative trigger. They persevered almost twice as long in trying to solve a very difficult problem before they asked the experimenter for help, a crisp demonstration of increased self-reliance. Money-primed people are also more selfish: they were much less willing to spend time helping another student who pretended to be confused about an experimental task.

You have now been introduced to that stranger in you, which may be in control of much of what you do, although you rarely have a glimpse of it.

people tend to be risk averse in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses.

What you learned about the Müller-Lyer illusion did not change the way you see the lines, but it changed your behavior. You now know that you cannot trust your impression of the length of lines that have fins appended to them, and you also know that in the standard Müller-Lyer display you cannot trust what you see. When asked about the length of the lines, you will report your informed belief, not the illusion that you continue to see.

Este pequeño ejemplo ilustra una gran historia: los seres humanos esperan tener reacciones emocionales más intensas (el arrepentimiento incluido) frente a un resultado producido por una acción que frente al mismo resultado producido por la inacción.

The emotional tail wags the rational dog." The affect heuristic simplifies our lives by creating a world that is much tidier than reality.

Much of the discussion in this book is about biases of intuition.

The agent of economic theory is rational, selfish, and his tastes do not change.

Individuals who uncritically follow their intuitions about puzzles are also prone to accept other suggestions from System 1. In particular, they are impulsive, impatient, and keen to receive immediate gratification.

avoiding the thought of white bears inhibiting the emotional response to a stirring film making a series of choices that involve conflict trying to impress others responding kindly to a partner's bad behavior interacting with a person of a different race (for prejudiced individuals)

To a psychologist, it is self-evident that people are neither fully rational nor completely selfish, and that their tastes are anything but stable.

asymmetric intensity of the motives to avoid losses and to achieve gains shows up almost everywhere.

System 1 has more influence on behavior when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth. People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. Memorizing and repeating digits loosens the hold of System 2 on behavior, but of course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control.

In the standard rational model of economics, people take risks because the odds are favorable—they accept some probability of a costly failure because the probability of success is sufficient.

probably contributes to an explanation of why people litigate, why they start wars, and why they open small businesses.

people expect to have stronger emotional reactions (including regret) to an outcome that is produced by action than to the same outcome when it is produced by inaction.

The implication is clear: as the psychologist Jonathan Haidt said in another context, "The emotional tail wags the rational dog