Quotes About Behavior

Our tendency to attribute our behavior to our context or to blame others for it is directly in contrast to how we tend to judge others' actions. When it comes to other people, we are far more likely to attribute the bad meal to their inability to cook rather than to other causes. This is called the fundamental attribution error.

It would be masochistic and sadistic of me to tell the truth about something if I knew for sure that I would create only misery for myself and others. We've all heard of pathological liars. Telling the truth in such circumstances would be an example of being pathologically honest. We need to judge each behavior on its specific consequences for happiness and not on the basis of whether or not it accords to a generally good rule.

Projection bias is what behavioral scientists call the scenario when we mistakenly use our current feelings to project how we will feel in the future.

If mindless eating is the problem, then paying attention to what you eat through salient feedback will be a big part of the solution.

cognitive dissonance.

to prime yourself to act differently, the defaults you set up, the commitments you make, and the norms of those you surround yourself with, as well as using these elements to alter your habits.

People also smile when they are miserable.

Believing-a-lie mistakes occur because certain people just don't make mistakes when they lie. These are not just psychopaths but also natural liars, people who are using the Stanislavski technique, and those who by other means succeed in coming to believe their own lies. The lie catcher must remember that the absence of a sign of deceit is not evidence of truth.

3. When the behavior changes occur in relation to a specific topic or question, that tells the lie catcher this could be a hot area to explore.

People do misinterpret events, especially the meaning of other people's actions and the motives that lead people to act one way or another.

Lying is such a central characteristic of life that better understanding of it is relevant to almost all human affairs.

The behavioral clues in face, body, voice, and manner of speaking are not signs of lying per se. They may be signs of emotions that don't fit with what is being said. Or they may be signs that the suspect is thinking about what he is saying before he says it. They are flags marking areas which need to be explored.

Most often lies fail because some sign of an emotion being concealed leaks. The stronger the emotions involved in the lie, and the greater the number of different emotions, the more likely it is that the lie will be betrayed by some form of behavioral leakage.

The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class.

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.

Too often conversion takes place at the surface levels of behavior and beliefs; but if worldviews are not transformed, the gospel is interpreted in terms of pagan worldviews, and the result is Christo-paganism.

No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute.

it is not our fault that we are the way we are with all our drives, passions and aversions.

Research by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman upends the idea that beliefs determine what we do or what we can do. It is the opposite. Beliefs do not change our actions. Actions change our beliefs.

Patients who suffer from sexual addictions enter treatment paralyzed by shame and humiliation. They describe themselves as "evil" and "defective." They desperately want to be liberated from the crush of their destructive behavior, but can't get out from under it's demoralizing weight

The key of liberation is to acknowledge that your unhealthy response to other peoples' behavior is a habit – and most importantly – that it's a habit you can break.

Oxytocin, it seems, oils the wheels of social life, enhancing trust, generosity, empathy and loyalty.

When confronted with their fruitless ways, binge writers often proffer a self-defeating dispositional attribution: "I'm just not the kind of person who's good at making a schedule and sticking to it." This is nonsense, of course. People like dispositional explanations when they don't want to change [...]

False humility is better than no humility at all.