Quotes About Behavior

Changing personal behavior to meet standards requires willpower, but willpower without self-awareness is as useless as a cannon commanded by a blind man.

That's more or less what researchers discovered after studying thousands of people inside and outside the laboratory. The experiments consistently demonstrated two lessons: 1. You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. 2. You use the same stock of willpower for all manner of tasks.

Self-awareness is a most peculiar trait among animals. Dogs will bark angrily at a mirror because they don't realize they're looking at themselves, and most other animals are similarly clueless when they're subjected to a formal procedure called the mirror test.

There's nothing wrong with a toddler having a tantrum. It's natural. It's our job to teach them other ways to deal with it.

You do not have to give people reasons to be violent, because they already have plenty of reasons. All you have to do is take away their reasons to restrain themselves.

Five minutes in an old book quickly reveals that most of what is being sold today as new insights into human behavior is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we have had for centuries.

67% of all shoppers intend to return home with the item they are shopping for, but that only 24% actually do so.

Just as Saint Augustine recognized that sin begins as an intention, we profilers saw that violent sexual crimes originate in fantasy. Our next challenge was to understand why certain individuals allowed their fantasies to lead them to cross the normal bounds of acceptable behavior. To do that, we had to examine their motivations.

We are apt to forget that children watch examples better than they listen to preaching.

Simon is cool. You know, it's different if you ever see him around his mom. He acts totally different.

Some behaviour is more heritable than others; you may start off with some genes loaded for depression but they don't just switch on without some environmental input. No one knows if you become 'you' because of nature or nurture: it's a combination of what you're born with and how you live your life. In

The essence of neuroplasticity is that what you practise you'll cultivate. If you are cruel and spiteful, you'll become expert at getting even crueller and more spiteful. If you practise being compassionate, you'll become more compassionate. That's how our brains work; the way we think or feel determines our wiring and what chemicals are coursing through our veins. If

Jealousy I wish we could express this emotion like kids do. If someone gets something you want, you just hit them over the head and snatch it back. That's why children are so un-neurotic. They are doing what we only dream of. The

The genes that make you shy, resilient, anxious, exuberant are shaped by maternal behaviour. If maternal behaviour changes, the genes change. Fearful baby rats were put with nurturing mother rats and were licked rather than ignored and their actual genetic expression changed, proving we're not held captive by our genes. (I

Unfortunately our old reptilian brain didn't get absorbed, it's still in there squashed with the newer models, like a relative you can't get rid of. This ancient brain, developed about 400 million years ago, is called the brain stem; it is the 'duh' part of the brain. It prompts us to mate, kill and eat, which is perfect if you're living in a field or working at Goldman Sachs.

Why are they like that?" I asked Cico. We skirted Blue Lake and worked our way through the tall, golden grass to the creek. "I don't know," Cico answered, "except that people, grown-ups and kids, seem to want to hurt each other—and it's worse when they're in a group.

When one came to know them it was surprising how childish grown people could be.

To understand humans, you must study them as a species of animal.

After all, when the behavior of another person leaves you no choice but to kill them, their murder is simply involuntary suicide.

But my animals are real animals, and they behave as animals usually do. It's really the humans who do strange things. Animals are predictable. Humans, never.

In fact, I judge a driver by the amount of abuse he gets from other drivers. If, in the course of a day's journey, his sister or mother is insulted on at least six occasions, then I begin to suspect that there is something wrong with the way he drives. If he returns the insults tenfold, I ask him to stop, and get off before we are assaulted.

The children who need love the most will always ask for it in the most unloving ways

The kids who need the most love will ask for it in the most unloving ways.

Rather, I believe it is a fundamental deficiency in self-regulation generally and executive functioning specifically—the ability to look toward the future and to control one's behavior based on that foresight.