American Psychologist Quotes

Once you become aware of what means the most to you, you're less likely to put off something that's really valuable for something that matters much less... it's knowing the difference between what's important and what isn't that allows us to solve problems effectively.

Social power [is the] potential influence, the ability of a person or group to induce or prevent change in another. Social control [is] the process by which members of a social entity are influenced to adhere to values and principles of proper behavior deemed appropriate for that social entity.

If people have multiple identities and deal with multiple realities, why should we expect them to be ontological purists?

Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention... But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.

The power of imagination is incredible. Often we see athletes achieving unbelievable results and wonder how they did it. One of the tools they use is visualization or mental imagery… they made the choice to create their destinies and visualized their achievements before they ultimately succeeded.

George Kohlrieser

We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves

Robert Cialdini

The male has paid a heavy price for his masculine 'privilege' and power. He is out of touch with his emotions and his body. He is playing by the rules of the male game plan and with lemming-like purpose he is destroying himself-emotionally, psychologically and physically.

Forcing a dog into an alpha roll, or shaking the dog, both constitute physical aggression. Physical aggression is not communication. If there is good communication, then such confrontations need not occur.

Integrity is unity of the personality; it implies being brutally honest with ourselves about our intentionality. Since intentionality is inextricably bound up with the daimonic, this is never an easy, nor always pleasant pursuit. But being willing to admit our daimonic tendencies - to know them consciously and to wisely oversee them - brings with it the invaluable blessing of freedom, vigor, inner strength, and self-acceptance.

Stephen A. Diamond

Thematic analysis is a process for encoding quantitative information. The encoding requires an explicit "code". This may be a list of themes; a complex model with themes, indicators, and qualifications that are causally related; or something in between these two forms. A theme is a pattern found in the information that at minimum describes and organizes the possible observations and at maximum interprets aspects of the phenomenon. A theme may be identified at the manifest level (directly observable in the information) or at the latent level (underlying the phenomenon). The themes may be initially generated inductively from the raw information or generated deductively from theory or prior research.

Richard Boyatzis

In real life, as well as in experiments, people can come to believe things that never really happened.

Elizabeth Loftus

The American mind in particular has been trained to equate success with victory, to equate doing well with beating someone.

When we inject people with positivity, their outlook expands. They see the big picture. When we inject them with neutrality or negativity, their peripheral vision shrinks. There is no big picture, no dots to connect.

Barbara Fredrickson

It has become accepted doctrine that we must attempt to study the whole man. Actually we cannot study even a whole tree or a whole guinea pig. But it is a whole tree and a whole guinea pig that have survived and evolved, and we must make the attempt.

While no one can change events that occurred in the past, everyone can change attitudes and beliefs about them.

Philip Zimbardo

One of the most powerful wellsprings of creative energy, outstanding accomplishment, and self-fulfillment seems to be falling in love with something - your dreams, your image of the future.

Ellis Paul Torrance

The problem of individual differences and group differences would not be made to disappear by abolishing tests. One cannot treat a fever by throwing away the thermometer.

It's the same mathematics, whether it's applied or not. It's just important to think of a problem in a general context. I really think all mathematics is applicable.

Louis Leon Thurstone

A person's genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.

Change is no modern invention. It is as old as time and as unlikely to disappear. It has always to be counted on as of the essence of human experience.

James Rowland Angell

The advantages of having decisions made by groups are often lost because of powerful psychological pressures that arise when the members work closely together, share the same set of values and, above all, face a crisis situation that puts everyone under intense stress

If we fail to provide boys with pro-social models of the transition to adulthood, they may construct their own. In some cases, gang initiation rituals, street racing, and random violence may be the result.

In the years ahead of me, I learned that the world is actually filled with people ready to tell you how likely something is, and what it means to be realistic. But what I have also learned is that no one, no one truly knows what is possible until they go and do it.

I was born from nothing and to nothing I will return. And yet, when i say the word nothing, when i admit, at last, 'I am nothing,' i feel mysteriously like something again, ground zero, genesis, the pull of possibilities.

We often say that psi is like musical ability: it is widely distributed in the populate, and everyone has some ability and can participate to some extent - in the same way that the most nonmusical person can learn to play a little Mozart on the piano. On the other hand, there is no substitute for innate talent, and there is no substitute for practice.