Quotes About Psychology

these capacities evolved so recently that our brains are, if you will, winging it and improvising on the fly when dealing with metaphor. As a result, we are actually pretty lousy at distinguishing between the metaphorical and literal, at remembering that "it's only a figure of speech"—with enormous consequences for our best and worst behaviors.

acute stress strengthens connectivity between the frontal cortex and motoric areas, while weakening frontal-hippocampal connections; the result is decision making that is habitual, rather than incorporating new information.

Crucially, the brain region most involved in feeling afraid and anxious is most involved in generating aggression.

It is never really the case that stress makes you sick, or even increases your risk of being sick. Stress increases your risk of getting diseases that make you sick, or if you have such a disease, stress increases the risk of your defenses being overwhelmed by the disease.

In another study subjects waited an unknown length of time to receive a shock.12 This lack of predictability and control was so aversive that many chose to receive a stronger shock immediately. And

sometimes, it can be enormously stressful to construct a world without stressors.

The explains why basal levels of testosterone have little to do with subsequent aggression, and why increases in testosterone due to puberty, sexual stimulation, or the start of mating season don't increase aggression either.

John Archer in a definitive 2006 review, "There is a weak and inconsistent association between testosterone levels and aggression in [human] adults, and … administration of testosterone to volunteers typically does not increase their aggression." The brain doesn't pay attention to fluctuations of testosterone levels within the normal range.

glucocorticoids in

The candidate gene approaches show that the effect of a single gene on a behavior is typically tiny. In other words, having the "warrior gene" variant of MAO probably has less effect on your behavior than does believing that you have it.

The biologies of strong love and strong hate are similar in many ways, as we'll see.

Another study explored the neurobiology of conforming.16 To simplify, a subject is part of a group (where, secretly, the rest are confederates); they are shown "X," then asked, "What did you see?" Everyone else says "Y." Does the subject lie and say "Y" also? Often. Subjects who stuck to their guns with "X" showed amygdala activation.

The most convincing data concern rare humans with damage restricted to the amygdala, either due to a type of encephalitis or a congenital disorder called Urbach-Wiethe disease, or where the amygdala was surgically destroyed to control severe, drug-resistant seizures originating there.5 Such individuals are impaired in detecting angry facial expressions (while being fine at recognizing other emotional states—stay tuned).

Conversely, instruct subjects to "carefully consider" their decision, or prime them to value reflection over intuition, and they'd be more selfish. The more time to think, the more time to do a version of "Yes, we all agree that cooperation is a good thing . . . but here is why I should be exempt this time"—what the authors called "calculated greed.

If people around you smell scared, your brain tilts toward concluding that you are too.

There's support for the idea—three of my favorites are that (a) forcing depressed people to smile makes them feel better; (b) instructing people to take on a more "dominant" posture makes them feel more so (lowers stress hormone levels); and (c) muscle relaxants decrease

by the time you finish this book, you'll see that it actually makes no sense to distinguish between aspects of a behavior that are "biological" and those that would be described as, say, "psychological" or "cultural." Utterly intertwined.

Various studies, predominantly by Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, show that when the frontal cortex labors hard on some cognitive task, immediately afterward individuals are more aggressive and less empathic, charitable, and honest. Metaphorically, the frontal cortex says, "Screw it. I'm tired and don't feel like thinking about my fellow human.

There is often an inverse relationship between levels of intragroup and intergroup aggression. In other words, groups with highly hostile interactions with neighbors tend to have minimal internal conflict. Or, to spin this another way, groups with high levels of internal conflict are too distracted to focus hostility on the Others.

We don't passively forget that something is scary. We actively learn that it isn't anymore.

Ooh, we're going to think subtly. We won't get suckered into simplistic answers, not like those chicken-crossing-the-road neurochemists and chicken evolutionary biologists and chicken psychoanalysts, all living in their own limited categorical buckets.

when the frontal cortex labors hard on some cognitive task, immediately afterward individuals are more aggressive and less empathic, charitable, and honest.

And behavior is altered by "situational labels"—call the game the "Wall Street Game," and people become less cooperative. Calling it the "Community Game" does the opposite.

If they're told, "The drug has a 95 percent survival rate," people, including doctors, are more likely to approve it than when told, "The drug has a 5 percent death rate.