Adam Alter Quotes & Sayings

They're distracting because they remind us of the world beyond the immediate conversation, — Adam Alter

Walter Isaacson, who ate dinner with the Jobs family while researching his biography of Steve Jobs, told Bilton that, "No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices." It seemed as if the people producing tech products were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing: never get high on your own supply. — Adam Alter

Addictive tech is part of the mainstream in a way that addictive substances never will be. — Adam Alter

The Hannah study showed that people are suggestible, willing to view the world with the guidance of labels when faced with an otherwise unbreakable tie. — Adam Alter

In 2000, Microsoft Canada reported that the average human had an attention span of twelve seconds; by 2013 that number had fallen to eight seconds. (According to Microsoft, a goldfish, by comparison, has an average attention span of nine seconds.) — Adam Alter

This striking result suggests that our quest for safety, and our resulting fear of difference, has fostered a justice system that discriminates against black defendants. Put simply, under some circumstances a black man who looks "more black" is 33 percent more likely to receive the death penalty than is a black man who commits the same crime but looks less stereotypically black. Inequalities like these illuminate the sad truth that our hidden, unconscious attitudes toward minorities evolve far more slowly than our overt spoken attitudes. Many of those ugly views are so well hidden that we're not even aware that we hold them. In — Adam Alter

Vyacheslav and Marina chose a generic name designed to be devoid of meaning: BOHdVF260602. Although the name seems meaningless, BOHdVF260602 stands for "Biological Object Human descendant of the Voronins and Frolovas, born on June 26, 2002. — Adam Alter

The same researchers also wanted to know why red hampers academic performance. It turns out that the color red activates the right hemisphere of the frontal cortex, a pattern of brain activity that typically indicates avoidance motivation. Avoidance motivation is the technical term for a state in which you're more concerned with avoiding failure than you are with achieving success. It's a distracting state of mind that all but guarantees poorer performance when you're trying to solve questions that require insight and mental effort. Psychologists have also shown that people literally recoil from the color red, leaning slightly farther backward in their seats when they're about to begin a test with a red rather than green cover. None of these effects occurs consciously, but when they occur together it becomes clear why the color red can be so damaging in academic contexts. — Adam Alter

Each of us is an ongoing product of the world within us, the world between us, and the world around us - and their hidden capacity to shape our every thought, feeling, and behavior. — Adam Alter

Both physical and social pain seem less painful when we're cushioned by symbolic reminders of money, even when the money isn't real or doesn't belong to us. — Adam Alter

As French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre noted sixty years ago, as soon as we imagine we're being watched, we start to notice how we're behaving, and we begin to imagine how other people might respond if they were watching. — Adam Alter