Quotes About Behavior

Effectiveness, in other words, is a habit; that is, a complex of practices. And practices can always be learned.

I soon learned that there is no "effective personality

But aggression has its constructive qualities as well.

Just as each culture, it seems, has its favorite neurosis, so does each have its favorite impulsions to be amused.

most behaviorally sophisticated animals outside the bilaterians are the—terrifying—box jellyfish

Crabs and some shrimp, in contrast, will groom injured areas.

Legs and fins don't necessarily show that one animal was interacting with others. Claws, in contrast, have little ambiguity.

Once the same chemicals are being sensed and produced, there is the possibility of coordination between cells. We have reached the birth of social behavior.

He looks like an American. In fact, he behaves like one. When he tried to pick up the first kid he knocked down, he smashed into several others, it snowballed, chaos ensued. My brother very much resembled America today in pretty much all things.

For any act to be morally right, three things are necessary: (1) right act, (2) right motive, and (3) right circumstances. If any one of these factors is not right, the act is wrong.

Psychology can make us feel good, but religion can make us be good.

Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.

manifests a good person, a good character, a good habit, and also because good deeds gradually form good habits, good character, good persons.

A habit is a stable disposition to act in a certain way, good or evil. Virtues are good habits; vices are bad habits.

Unlike most CEOs, when trying something new, Jeff Bezos and his senior team (known as the S Team) don't try to develop elaborate financial projections or return on investment calculations. "You can't put into a spreadsheet how people are going to behave around a new product," Bezos will say.

Whether particular people with the capacity to take an objective point of view actually do take this objective viewpoint into account when they act will depend on the strength of their desire to avoid inconsistency between the way they reason publicly and the way they act.

Those who lie and cheat, but do not believe what they are doing to be wrong, may be living according to ethical standards. They may believe, for any of a number of possible reasons, that it is right to lie, cheat, steal and so on. They are not living according to conventional ethical standards, but they may be living according to some other ethical standards.

If our holding certain values had no effect at all on what we chose to do, values would lose all their importance. Now

They then blocked the passage between the compartments with a piece of plate glass and tested the dog again. The dog "jumped forward and smashed his head against the glass." The dogs began by showing symptoms such as "defecation, urination, yelping and shrieking, trembling, attacking the apparatus, and so on; but after ten or twelve days of trials dogs who were prevented from escaping shock ceased to resist.

Just as a rat can be conditioned to press a lever in return for a reward of food, so a human being can be conditioned by professional rewards to ignore the ethical issues raised by animal experiments.

Cultural traits, however, are a more general category than memes, because they also include quantitative (smoothly-varying) characteristics that cannot be easily represented as discrete alternatives: for example, the inclination to trust strangers. (More on that below.)

Our behavior and decisions are based on a mixture of calculation, emotions, and internalized norms, with calculation often a minor component of the cocktail.

You think a thing has more value simply because it belongs to you. Experts called behavioral economists have noted an issue they call the endowment effect, Dr. Tolin says. Merely owning an item causes you to exaggerate its value, or "endow" it with more worth.

That year I stopped pacing along the sidelines during games because I noticed that whenever I got agitated, Dennis would become hyperactive. And if I argued with a ref, it would only give him license to do the same. So I decided to become as quiet and restrained as possible. I didn't want to set Dennis off, because once he got agitated, there was no telling what he might do. —