Quotes About Behavior

Experience, particularly in childhood, sculpts the brain. The

A series of studies by Marian Radke-Yarrow and Carolyn Zahn-Waxler at the National Institute of Mental Health showed that a large part of this difference in empathic concern had to do with how parents disciplined their children. Children, they found, were more empathic when the discipline included calling strong attention to the distress their misbehavior caused someone else: "Look how sad you've made her feel" instead of "That was naughty.

the workings of the amygdala and its interplay with the neocortex are at the heart of emotional intelligence.

los psicópatas no se preocupen por las posibles consecuencias de sus actos. Y su incapacidad de experimentar el miedo es la que da cuenta de su ausencia de toda empatía –o compasión– hacia el dolor y el miedo de sus víctimas.

As we all know from experience, when it comes to shaping our decisions and our actions, feeling counts every bit as much—and often more—than thought.

porque constituye el vínculo entre los sentimientos, el carácter y los impulsos morales.

Podríamos decir que quienes se hallan a merced de sus impulsos –quienes carecen de autocontrol– adolecen de una deficiencia moral porque la capacidad de controlar los impulsos constituye el fundamento mismo de la voluntad y del carácter. Por

Todo padre sabe que, desde el momento de su nacimiento, un niño es tranquilo y plácido o, en cambio, irritable y difícil.

Hay muchos estudios que corroboran la persistencia de la agresividad infantil en chicos como Jimmy.11 Como ya hemos visto en otro lugar, los padres de los niños agresivos suelen alternar la indiferencia con los castigos duros y arbitrarios, una pauta que, comprensiblemente, fomenta la paranoia y la agresividad.

las personas muy inteligentes pueden hacer cosas muy estúpidas.

All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb "to move," plus the prefix "e-" to connote "move away," suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion. That

para conseguir que hagamos lo que le interesa, la naturaleza lo convierte en un placer».

An estimated 85 percent of those with dyssemia have the deficit because they failed to learn how to read nonverbal signals or how to respond to them, either because they did not interact enough with their peers or because their family did not display a given range of emotion or followed eccentric social norms.

some studies have found that pessimists smoke and drink more, and exercise less, than optimists, and are generally much more careless about their health

All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb "to move," plus the prefix "e-" to connote "move away," suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion.

Quanto mais tempo alguém ignora uma mensagem antes de por fim responder, maior o poder social relativo dessa pessoa. Se se cartografar estes tempos de reação no contexto de uma organização inteira, obter-se-á um gráfico extremamente preciso das verdadeiras posições sociais.

la Universidad de Duke.10 Por ejemplo, Williams descubrió que los médicos que obtuvieron las puntuaciones más elevadas en un test de hostilidad realizado cuando todavía eran estudiantes mostraban, alrededor de los cincuenta años, un índice de mortalidad siete veces mayor que quienes habían obtenido puntuaciones más bajas.

Character, writes Amitai Etzioni, the George Washington University social theorist, is "the psychological muscle that moral conduct requires."14

At age ten, roughly the same percent of girls as boys are overtly aggressive, given to open confrontation when angered. But by age thirteen, a telling difference between the sexes emerges: Girls become more adept than boys at artful aggressive tactics like ostracism, vicious gossip, and indirect vendettas. Boys, by and large, simply continue being confrontational when angered, oblivious to these more covert strategies.

Antisocial teenage girls don't get violent, they get pregnant.

Nobody knows why men do things.

Make no mistake: E-mail, Facebook, and Twitter checking constitute a neural addiction.

A general "law of least effort" applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.

You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.