Quotes About Behavior

Seemingly irrational behavior can be understood as culturally acceptable attempts to secure reward or avoid punishment in the transcendental future.

Virtually all animals—single-celled organisms as well as humans—are conditioned to react in predictable ways, some of which we can modify and some of which are more difficult to change.

Psychological determinism asserts that every thought and feeling we have and every action we perform is caused by events in the past.

Futureoriented people believe that when you choose a behavior, you choose its future consequences, but Zajonc, Bargh, and many others in social psychology have demonstrated that sometimes you do not choose a behavior. Sometimes a behavior chooses you based upon the environment in which you find yourself.

our use of electronic media—use of televisions, radios, computers, phones, iPods and MP3s, videos, and game players—now accounts for an average of slightly under eight hours (470 minutes) in an average American's typical twelve-and-a-half-hour day. Over

What does it say about us when our intimacy is an embarrassment and our hostility is normalized?

It happened to some people, that obsession with throwing their clothes off at an age when it would be best to keep them on.

If all the smart restaurants were closed down, the 'flapper' trade would probably close down also, and the flappers, disdaining the more humble eating-houses they were wont to frequent, may even return to their homes, which they left to imperil, if not to sacrifice, their chastity.

It's not what a person says but what he does that reveals his true character.

any man is just made up of some deportment and behaviour that have met with the silent approval of a very small number of women.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.

In life, as in art, talking vitiates doing.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

Jag har aldrig varit förtjust i småbarn. Ruggiga små bestar som läcker i båda ändarna, och inte har de någon respekt för lergods heller.

When Mathewson arrived in the majors, most first class and many second class hotels would not host big league teams for fear that the players' behavior would offend other guests. The hotels that did admit ballplayers often made them eat in a separate dining room. Players were well known for pinching waitresses and wrecking furniture, and if they didn't like the steaks they were served, they would nail them to the restaurant's walls.

it seemed to Kirsch that the most reliable guide to the mental landscape of a patient was the patient himself. He was better placed to explain his behaviour and his experiences than anyone else. Yet wherever Kirsch went, the patient was the very last person anyone thought to consult. Because, of course, the patient was insane.

Machines may get better at "mimicking human meaning," and thereby better at predicting human behavior, but "there's a difference between mimicking and reflecting meaning and originating meaning," Ferrucci said. That's a space human judgment will always occupy.

The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.

Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.

The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.

We can assume that most people, most of the time, are moral creatures. But imagine that this morality is like a gearshift that at times gets pushed into neutral. When that happens, morality is disengaged. If the car happens to be on an incline, car and driver move precipitously downhill. It is then the nature of the circumstances that determines outcomes, not the driver's skills or intentions.

Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We're trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.

I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?

Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.