Quotes About Psychology

The extensive work done by Dr. Martin Seligman on learned optimism spanned 20 years, and he studied more than half a million children and adults. He found and scientifically confirmed two things: 1) Optimism makes you more effective at whatever you do, and 2) optimism can be learned.

She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn't, because he didn't care.

My fear represented the failure of the human system. It is a sad truth of our creation: Something is amiss in our design, there are loose ends of our psychology that are simply not wrapped up. My fears were the dirty secrets of evolution. They were not provided for, and I was forced to construct elaborate temples to house them.

Mirabelle is not sparkling tonight, because she works only in gears, and tonight she is in the wrong gear. Third gear is her scholarly, perspicacious, witty self; second gear is her happy, giddy, childish self; and first gear is her complaining, helpless, unmotivated self. Tonight she is somewhere midshift, between helpless and childish.

You cannot be a good ACT therapist if you take words to be right, correct, and true rather than asking "How effectual are they?

It is based on a pragmatic philosophy of science called functional contextualism

The fields of psychology and psychiatry have also inadvertently contributed to the problem. Ideas that are not evidence-based proliferate, such as Freud's Oedipus complex (you are sexually attracted to your parents, which creates a hidden conflict, giving rise to anxiety), while evidence-based ones lie dormant.

Psychological rigidity is at its core an attempt to avoid negative thoughts and feelings caused by difficult experiences, both when they occur and in our memory of them.

In the ACT approach, a goal of healthy living is not so much to feel good as to feel good. It is psychologically healthy to have unpleasant thoughts and feelings as well as pleasant ones, and doing so gives us full access to the richness of our unique personal histories

People aren't "good" or "bad." People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated—for good or ill—if only you find the right levers.

Married people, for instance, are demonstrably happier than single people; does this mean that marriage causes happiness? Not necessarily. The data suggest that happy people are more likely to get married in the first place.

People are complicated creatures, with a nuanced set of private and public incentives, and that our behavior is enormously influenced by circumstances.

It also means that the pain of negative feedback will for most people trump the pleasure from positive feedback.

La gente no es «buena» ni «mala». Las personas son personas y responden a incentivos. Casi siempre pueden ser manipuladas —para bien o para mal— si se encuentran las palancas adecuadas.

Most people, whether because of nature or nurture, generally put their own interests ahead of others'. This doesn't make them bad people; it just makes them human.

Married people, for instance, are demonstrably happier than single people; does this mean that marriage causes happiness? Not necessarily. The data suggest that happy people are more likely to get married in the first place. As one researcher memorably put it, "If you're grumpy, who the hell wants to marry you?

But as history clearly shows, most people, whether because of nature or nurture, generally put their own interests ahead of others'.

Behavior is driven by a much richer set of values and preferences.

is a systematic means of describing how people make decisions and how they change their minds;

If asked how we'd behave in a situation that pits a private benefit against the greater good, most of us won't admit to favoring the private benefit. But as history clearly shows, most people, whether because of nature or nurture, generally put their own interests ahead of others'. This doesn't make them bad people; it just makes them human.

History clearly shows, most people, whether because of nature or nurture, generally put their own interests ahead of others'. This doesn't make them bad people; it just makes them human.

When the eyes were watching, Bateson's colleagues left nearly three times as much money in the honesty box. So the next time you laugh when a bird is frightened off by a silly scarecrow, remember that scarecrows work on human beings too.

Yes, it may be money they're after—but just as often they are motivated by wanting to be liked, or not be hated; by wanting to stand out in a crowd, or perhaps not stand out.

From a quality-of-life perspective, psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.