Quotes About Behavior

Dissonance is bothersome under any circumstances, but it is most painful to people when an important element of their self-concept is threatened—typically when they do something that is inconsistent with their view of themselves.

decades of experimental research have found exactly the opposite: when people vent their feelings aggressively, they often feel worse, pump up their blood pressure, and make themselves even angrier.

The specific tactics vary, but our efforts at self-justification are all designed to serve our need to feel good about what we have done, what we believe, and who we are.

separates his behavior from his identity

separates his behavior from his identity, and that ability is what ultimately allows people to live with behavior they now condemn.

Whether those claims are true or false is irrelevant. When we cross these lines, we are justifying behavior that we know is wrong precisely so that we can continue to see ourselves as honest people and not criminals or thieves. Whether the behavior in question is a small thing like spilling ink on a hotel bedspread or a big thing like embezzlement, the mechanism of self-justification is the same.

But, for better or worse, the human mind is more complex than the brain of a rat or a puppy. A dog may appear contrite for having been caught peeing on the carpet, but she will not try to think up justifications for her misbehavior. Humans think—and because we think, dissonance theory demonstrates, our behavior transcends the effects of rewards and punishments and often contradicts them.

Elliot predicted that if people go through a great deal of pain, discomfort, effort, or embarrassment to get something, they will be happier with that "something" than if it came to them easily. For behaviorists, this was a preposterous prediction. Why would people like anything associated with pain? But for Elliot, the answer was obvious: self-justification.

the policies that permitted it. "Without a mutual acknowledgment of mistakes made, and some form of accountability, another reversion to torture may be difficult to prevent," says political scientist Darius Rejali. "Nothing predicts future behavior as much as past impunity."25 Impunity, in turn, rewards self-justification, not only in the perpetrators but also in the nation that exonerates them.

Unromantic explanations—such as the structure of work—are better predictors of how men and women will get along than are explanations based on male and female "nature.

Gentlemen, for all their talk of honour, really had the oddest morals.

He realized this character trait, like most, cut both ways, and could be a virtue or a flaw, depending on the circumstances.

But West, like the rest of the Trevors, was endlessly polite. It gave them protection; they could stand neatly behind their courtesy.

When I'm nervous, I get nasty. It's a problem.

Most kids are assholes, just like most adults.

And you didn't have to go out and get it. You didn't have to make eye contact with the guy at the store who now knows you like watching girls get spanked. Eye contact is what keeps us civilized.

I drank when I was happy and I drank when I was anxious and I drank when I was bored and I drank when I was depressed, which was often.

and there is no simple reason why this happens, no single moment, no physiological event that pushes a heavy drinker across a concrete line into alcoholism. It's a slow, gradual, insidious, elusive becoming.

tend to side with the Monks of New Skete on the question of the canine desire to please: dogs, they say, care a lot less about pleasing humans than they care about pleasing themselves; if acting in a way that pleases you means something good will happen to them—they'll get a biscuit, a reward, a pat on the back—they're likely to be motivated to carry out the task, but their agenda is not necessarily driven by the pure and selfless wish to make you happy.

One woman's tub of cottage cheese is another's maxed-out MasterCard; one woman's soul-murdering love affair is another's frenzied eating binge. The methods may differ, but boil any of these behaviors down to their essential ingredients and you are likely find a particularly female blend of anxiety, guilt, shame, and sorrow, the psychic roux of profound—and often profoundly misunderstood—hungers.

I don't believe he's the marrying sort. He'll be one of those men who grows into an old roué, leering at the maids and avoided by decent women." "Well, that will likely make some indecent woman very happy." Joan

Overall, becoming a carbon-neutral country would involve changes in our behaviour, but these are modest compared with the changes that will be forced upon us if we do nothing.

Cornered, she seemed to possess no mechanism for behaving well. By the same token, when not trapped or obliged to confront people or situations that upset her, she had a particular ability to think about them with apparently genuine pleasure. Martha

The brain evolved not for us to think but to allow us to move – away from danger and towards rewards.