Quotes About Psychology

Across the thirty-five studies, the correlation between extraversion and sales performance was a minuscule 0.07.)

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience BY MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

Deci found that those oriented toward control and extrinsic rewards showed greater public self-consciousness, acted more defensively, and were more likely to exhibit the Type A behavior pattern.5

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation BY EDWARD L. DECI WITH RICHARD FLASTE

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success BY CAROL DWECK

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the Zeigarnik effect, our tendency to remember unfinished tasks better than finished ones.2

Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile have found that external rewards and punishments—both carrots and sticks—can work nicely for algorithmic tasks. But they can be devastating for heuristic ones.

self-determination theory." Many theories of behavior pivot around a particular human tendency: We're keen responders to positive and negative reinforcements, or zippy calculators of our self-interest, or lumpy duffel bags of psychosexual conflicts.

Remember your Abraham Maslow and your Viktor Frankl. Bet your business on it.

Being pessimistic is almost always a recipe for low levels of what psychologists call "subjective well-being." It's also a detriment in most professions. But as Martin Seligman has written, "There is one glaring exception: pessimists do better at law.

People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person's motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person's intrinsic motivation toward the activity."4

But the most effective self-talk of all doesn't merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions.

Careful consideration of reward effects reported in 128 experiments lead to the conclusion that tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation

When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity

Alas, the social science shows something different and more nuanced. We human beings talk to ourselves all the time—so much, in fact, that it's possible to categorize our self-talk. Some of it is positive, as in "I'm strong," "I've got this," or "I will be the world's greatest salesman." Some

people oriented toward autonomy and intrinsic motivation have higher self-esteem, better interpersonal relationships, and greater general well-being than those who are extrinsically motivated.

When used in these situations, "if-then" rewards usually do more harm than good. By neglecting the ingredients of genuine motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—they limit what each of us can achieve.

A Geography of Time: Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist (1997) By Robert V. Levine

If Only counterfactuals degrade our feelings now, but—and this is key—they can improve our lives later. Regret is the quintessential upward counterfactual—the ultimate If Only. The source of its power, scientists are discovering, is that it muddles the conventional pain-pleasure calculus.[10] Its very purpose is to make us feel worse—because by making us feel worse today, regret helps us do better tomorrow.

Motivation comes in spurts—which is why Stanford psychologist B. J. Fogg recommends taking advantage of "motivation waves" so you can weather "motivation troughs.

It's all just chemicals.

The great tennis player John McEnroe used this to his advantage on the courts. When an opponent was performing especially well, for example by using a particularly good backhand, McEnroe would compliment him on it. McEnroe knew this would cause the opponent to think about his backhand, and this thinking disrupted the automatic application of it.

Daniel J. Levitin