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.

A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.

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.

Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense; and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself.

Change does not fail to occur because of insincerity. The heart patient is not insincere about his wish to keep living, even as he reaches for another cigarette. Change fails to occur because we mean both things. It fails to occur because we are a living contradiction.

No guarantees come with children's liberation. But neither the promise of great benefits to all nor the prediction of great difficulties ahead can serve as the reason for granting or denying rights to children. Rights will be granted because without them children are incapacitated, oppressed, and abused.

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.

The marriage relationship is one of God's creations for building up people. It gives husbands and wives the chance to minister to an immortal human being in a uniquely intimate fashion. To enjoy the meaningfulness of marriage, then, requires a once-made but ongoing commitment of mutual ministry to our mates and the more we seize them, the more meaning our marriage will have.

The causes of violence lie in our basic values and the way in which we bring up our children and youth.

James W. Prescott

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

Elizabeth Loftus

Something about the topic of consciousness makes people, like the White Queen in Through The Looking Glass, believe six impossible things before breakfast.

If we went into stores only when we needed to buy something, and if once there we bought only what we needed, the economy would collapse, boom.

During the past three decades numerous empirical studies of economic behavior have been carried out and their theoretical foundation has been clarified. There was a rapid development and articulation of data, theory, and methodology. A new discipline of behavioral economics was emerging [which] consists of the empirical investigations of the behavior of businessmen and consumers in one country in one time. Generalizations about economic behavior emerge gradually by comparing behavior observed under different circumstances.

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

Philip Zimbardo

The brain is a physical system. It functions as a computer. Its circuits are designed to generate behavior that is appropriate to your environmental circumstances.

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

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

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.

By the basis of power we mean the relationship between O and P which is the source of that power. It is rare that we can say with certainty that a given empirical case of power is limited to one source. Normally, the relation between O and P will be characterized by several qualitatively different variables which are bases of power (30). Although there are undoubtedly many possible bases of power which may be distinguished, we shall here define five which seem especially common and important. These five bases of O's power are:

John R. P. French

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

We should be on our guard against the temptation to argue directly from skill to capacity, and to assume when a man displays skill in some feat, his capacity is therefore considerable.

Tom Hatherley Pear

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

An affective response more appropriate to another's situation than one's own.

Hindsight is of little value in the decision-making process. It distorts our memory for events that occurred at the time of the decision so that the actual consequence seems to have been a "foregone conclusion." Thus, it may be difficult to learn from our mistakes.

Diane F. Halpern