Behavioral Quotes & Sayings

Decades of behavioral blunders and ill-conceived marriages and businesses run amok had left next to nothing by the time Leonard was in high school. He'd wangled himself an engineering scholarship to Cornell and then a job with Dow Chemical during a time he referred to, reverently, as the Dawn of the Absorbency Revolution. — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

I'm not sure the least educated members of the population are missing out on the advances in medical technology as much as they are adopting harmful behavioral habits that shorten their life. — S. Jay Olshansky

Indeed it can be seen as our human essence, how few behavioral imperatives we follow. How flexible we are in finding new things to do, new ways to go. How ingeniously, inventively, desperately we seek the right way, the true way, the Way we believe we lost long ago among the thickets of novelty and opportunity and choice... — Ursula K. Le Guin

Consider this: there is not a single word in [the Sermon on the Mount] about what to believe, only words about what to do. It is a behavioral manifesto, not a propositional one. Yet three centuries later, when the Nicene Creed became the official oath of Christendom, there was not a single word in it about what to do, only words about what to believe! — Robin Meyers

Our behavioral patterns are exceedingly complex, and psychology is a young science. The scope of our behavioral wisdom exceeds the breadth of our explicit interpretation. We act, even instruct, and yet do not understand. How can we do what we cannot explain? — Jordan B. Peterson

Our primitive ancestors learnt various behavioral characteristics like jealousy, possessiveness and aggression to ensure the survival of their wild love life in the harsh environment of Mother Nature. And all those behavioral responses eventually got engraved in our genetic blueprint. So, these are not the enemies in the path of a healthy relationship, rather when utilized properly they can even kindle the spark in a dying relationship. — Abhijit Naskar

The stories leaders and others tell, few of which are true, are a lousy foundation on which to base any sort of science, and we know how to accomplish behavioral change and the importance of priming, informational saliency, and social networks. Producing inspiration and other good feelings doesn't last very long. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

Prolonged exposure therapy, a variant of flooding, attempts to maintain a high level of fear arousal, but its key premise is that all aspects of fear, as defined by Lang's three response systems (behavioral avoidance, physiological responses, and verbal behavior), have to be reduced in order for exposure to be effective. — Joseph E. Ledoux

Care of the soul asks for a cultivation of the larger world depression represents. When we speak clinically of depression, we think of an emotional or behavioral condition, but when we imagine depression as a visitation by Saturn, then many qualities of his world come into view: the need for isolation, the coagulation of fantasy, the distilling of memory, and accommodation with death, to name only a few. For — Thomas Moore

Everyone's lost a lot of money on their 401k plans. I've heard some people calling them 201k plans. So it's even more important to get people to be saving more for retirement. Behavioral economics has helped us learn a lot about how to do that. — Richard Thaler

In my own field, I know that solid science can easily be done with ethics and compassion. There's nothing wrong with compassionate or sentimental science or scientists. Studies of animal thought, emotions, and self-awareness, as well as behavioral ecology and conservation biology, can all be compassionate as well as scientifically rigorous. Science and the ethical treatment of animals aren't incompatible. We can do solid science with an open mind and a big heart.
I encourage everyone to go where their hearts take them, with love, not fear. If we all travel this road, the world will be a better place for all beings. Kinder and more humane choices will be made when we let our hearts lead the way. Compassion begets compassion and caring for and loving animals spills over into compassion and caring for humans. The umbrella of compassion is very important to share freely and widely. — Marc Bekoff

People think about life in terms of changes, not levels. They can be changes from the status quo or changes from what was expected, but whatever form they take, it is changes that make us happy or miserable. — Richard H. Thaler

The simple act of talking openly about behavioral patterns makes the subconscious conscious. — Sheryl Sandberg

I would reject the distinction between a Keynesian moment and a behavioral moment. — Cass Sunstein

I have been amazed by the interest in cognitive behavioral therapy that has developed since 'Feeling Good' was first published in 1980. At that time, very few people had heard of cognitive therapy. — David D. Burns

There are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren't anymore. I don't know if that's the similar situation or that's the case for anyone that's black. It's a behavioral issue as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that's the diff for serving in the military. — Rick Santorum

The concept of loss aversion is certainly the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics. — Daniel Kahneman

I can't just say one time of the year I'm going to do something different. I have to commit to a lifestyle behavioral change and just try to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday. — Gabrielle Union

A fly with a brain the size of a salt grain has the behavioral repertoire nearly as complex as a much larger animal such as a mouse. That's a super-interesting problem from an engineering perspective. — Michael Dickinson

Jesus prescribes a doctrinal test for false prophets because a behavioral test is unreliable. — John Robbins

It is telling commentary on economic orthodoxy that a whole subdiscipline--behavioral economics--and a raft of lab experiments are needed to show that humans often fail to behave with the rationality expected of them. — Kaushik Basu

The combination of the Main brain with its central nervous system, and the ancient Animal Brain with its somatic, enteric nervous system in the inner body - in the gut - and the constant dialog between them provides a self-correcting feedback system, which regulates the behavioral qualities of the organism when consciously cultivated - preferably in early youth. — Martha Char Love

GAPS Diet This diet is intended to heal gut damage in children, which may result in autism, ADHD, severe food allergies, or other outward symptoms. Children who have severe physical and behavioral problems may begin this diet in order to address the underlying causes, which is a so-called "leaky gut." This means that the good gut flora that should be present isn't, and that there are "holes" in the gut wall where undigested proteins are leaking through and into the bloodstream, sensitizing the child. There is also an overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria and likely, candida. The GAPS diet[2] addresses this and helps to actually heal the gut. — Anonymous

Mind control is the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles. Conformity, compliance, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, guilt and fear arousal, modeling and identification are some of the staple social influence ingredients well studied in psychological experiments and field studies. In some combinations, they create a powerful crucible of extreme mental and behavioral manipulation when synthesized with several other real-world factors, such as charismatic, authoritarian leaders, dominant ideologies, social isolation, physical debilitation, induced phobias, and extreme threats or promised rewards that are typically deceptively orchestrated, over an extended time period in settings where they are applied intensively. — Steven Hassan

The ignorance about the importance of cognitive differences and the behavioral dynamics that operate within their Board is contributing to the generally poor performance of Board. — Pearl Zhu

Six years later the lead scientist, pharmacologist Kenneth Blum, published a much more subdued assessment: Unfortunately it was erroneously reported that [we] had found the "alcoholism gene," implying that there was a one-to-one relation between a gene and a specific behavior. Such misinterpretations are common - readers may recall accounts of an "obesity gene," or a "personality gene." Needless to say, there is no such thing as a specific gene for alcoholism, obesity, or a particular type of personality. ... Rather the issue at hand is to understand how certain genes and behavioral traits are connected. — Gabor Mate

Show me the science. Last I heard, gay six-year-olds remain unproven. — Vernon D. Burns

Behaviorism was a busted flush, but neo-behaviorist theories, especially choice architecture, achieve behavioral change without coercion or the downsides of carrots and sticks. — Paul Gibbons

Tactics are great, but tactics become commoditized." TF: If you understand principles, you can create tactics. If you are dependent on perishable tactics, you are always at a disadvantage. This is why Ramit studies behavioral psychology and the elements of persuasion that appear hardwired. — Timothy Ferriss

Buddhists were actually the first cognitive-behavioral therapists. — Jack Kornfield

The behavioral programme of the post-social society during the post-capitalism interregnum is governed by a neoliberal ethos of competetive self-improvement, of untiring cultivation of one's marketable human capital, enthusiastic dedication to work, and cheerfully optimistic, playful acceptance of the risks inherent in a world that has outgrown government. That this programme is dutifully implemented is essential, as the reproduction of the post-capitalist society lite hangs on the thin thread of an accommodating systematic architecture. Structuralist critique of false institutions may therefore have to be complemented by a renewed culturalist critique of false consciousness. — Wolfgang Streeck

True maturity is in attitude and a true attitude is maturity. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

A new laboratory technique, positron emission tomography, uses radioactively labeled oxygen or glucose that essentially lights up specific and different areas of the brain being activated when a person speaks words or sees words or hears words, revealing the organic location for areas of behavioral malfunction. — Floyd Skloot

I've learned there's a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance. — James Chanos

The more we learn of behavioral psychology, the more we understand that ideologies are as much a product of people's nature as of observed experience. The perverted doctrines that actuated the Bolshevists may be immanent in a portion of humanity. Some people are determined to see every success as a swindling of someone else, every transaction as an exploitation, every exercise in freedom as a violation of some ideal plan, every tradition as a superstition. How delicious that, as we approach the bicentenary of his birth, Karl Marx should have turned into the thing he loathed above all: the prophet of an irrational faith. — Daniel Hannan

Students who attend what they considered to be their first-choice school were less likely to persist in a biomedical or behavioral science major, they write. You think you want to go to the fanciest school you can. You don't. — Malcolm Gladwell

Within childhood behaviors, there are known behaviors; there's teasing and there's name-calling, and different kinds of things happen as kids start to socialize. And then there's serious bullying, and then there's actual aggression and behavioral problems. But you can't put it all under the tent of bullying. — Julianne Moore

A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment. — B.F. Skinner

Always keep an open mind and to listen to what those around you have to say about you. You might actually learn something that may help you become a better person! — Auliq Ice

You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general. — Daniel Kahneman

To begin with, there are three important aspects about being human: We are not alone and we are wired for meaningful connection. We travel in packs (families, friendships, social groups, and sub-groups). Our behavioral decisions always include the fact that we live in community and will always directly or indirectly reflect this shared existence with other people - like it or not. — Steven Sisler

These people are obsessive. They go overboard interpreting verbal and behavioral cues that take them way beyond reality. — Cary Cooper

Indeed, the best way to think of willpower is not as some shapeless behavioral trait but as a sort of psychic muscle, one that can atrophy or grow stronger depending on how it's used. — Jeffrey Kluger

A lot of people believe that mental illness does not affect our children within the school system. But the truth is that a lot of bullying stems from untreated or poorly treated mental and behavioral health problems. — Tamara Hill

A habit can be regarded as something that we do regularly without giving it too much thought. It is an automatic behavioral and mental activity, which makes us possible for us to do things without spending excessive mental energy. — Christ Lewis

As technology increasingly takes over knowledge-based work, the cognitive skills that are central to today's education systems will remain important; but behavioral and non-cognitive skills necessary for collaboration, innovation, and problem solving will become essential as well. — Klaus Schwab

I think that the definition of autism is too broad. You got to remember, autism definition is a behavioral profiling. — Temple Grandin

Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful. — B.F. Skinner

You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do. — Ron Silver

Oh my God. She waited for the chastising sting of the mark, which acted like a behavioral-modification dog collar. When the burn didn't come after taking the Lord's name in vain, she found some of the fog in her brain lifting. — Sylvia Day

Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders provides clinicians with essential guidelines to treat patients in the era of managed care. Seven psychiatric disorders are described and conceptualized in cognitive-behavioral terms. The authors then provided an unusually clear, reader-friendly description of how to assess and treat each disorder with illustrative case examples, and patient forms and handouts. It should prove very useful for clinicians or clinicians-in-training who want to learn how to conduct short-term treatment through an empirically validated approach. — Judith S. Beck

Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential. — Ernst Mayr

This process - in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine - is known as "chunking," and it's at the root of how habits form.1.18 There are dozens - if not hundreds - of behavioral chunks that we rely on every day. — Charles Duhigg

Suicide rates have not slumped under the onslaught of antidepressants, mood-stabilizers, anxiolytic and anti-psychotic drugs; the jump in suicide rates suggests that the opposite is true. In some cases, suicide risk skyrockets once treatment begins (the patient may feel not only penalized for a justifiable reaction, but permanently stigmatized as malfunctioning). Studies show that self-loathing sharply decreases only in the course of cognitive-behavioral treatment. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

I wanted to shove her
away, thinking of my job, of headlines,
of how this kind of comfort was outside
the behavioral guidelines of my contract.
She began to sob more softly while holding me
tightly, and I let her. I let her have control
of me for that moment. I let her break
behavioral guidelines as more important ones
had been broken on her. And then we stopped
being student and teacher - just a couple people
at a loss when the powerful and unexpected
had been suddenly thrust upon us.
The principal and three students turned the corner
and stopped short. I knew it might be years
before I cleared my name, but far longer
for her to reclaim her life. — B.J. Ward

When Martha first met me, I was anxious and jumpy. I was always tapping my foot, rocking, or exhibiting some other behavioral aberration. Of course, now we know that's just normal Aspergian behavior, but back then other people thought it was weird, so of course I did, too. One day, for some reason, she decided to try petting my arm, and I immediately stopped rocking and fidgeting. The result was so dramatic, she never stopped. It didn't take long for me to realize the calming effect, too. I like being petted and scratched. "Can you pet me?" I say when I sit next to her. — John Elder Robison

We create in people through our actions and example. In this way people around us become reflections of our own behavioral patterns and internal energies — Bryant McGill

People don't really change they only get known better. — Johan Coetzer

The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you're beating the market but by whether you've put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go. — Benjamin Graham

Rather than be fearful and sell out at the worst time or get greedy when the market is way up, investors should control their emotions and not only avoid panic, but embrace the market volatility for what it is: an opportunity and a gift. Suffocate the instincts that want to make you a bad investor and rather embrace the chaos that normally causes them to rise to the surface. — Peter Mallouk

On traditional economic theory:
We do not play chess as if we were a grandmaster, invest as if we were Warren Buffett, or cook like an Iron Chef. It is more likely we cook like Warren Buffett, who loves to eat at Dairy Queen. — Richard H. Thaler

The psychologist Mark Schaller has shown that disgust is part of what he calls the "behavioral immune system" - a set of cognitive modules that are triggered by signs of infection or disease in other people and that make you want to get away from those people.40 — Jonathan Haidt

The idea is to help patients more clearly assess the contents of their thought stream, teaching them to note and correct the conceptual errors termed "cognitive distortions" that characterize psychopathological thinking. Somone in the grips of such thinking would, for instance, regard a half-full glass not merely as half-empty but also fatally flawed, forever useless, constitutionally incapable of ever being full, and fit only to be discarded. By the mid-1980s, cognitive therapy was being used more and more in combination with behavioral therapy for OCD, and it seemed naturally compatible with a mindfulness-based perspective. If I could show that a cognitive-behavioral approach, infused with mindful awareness, could be marshaled against the disease, and if successful therapy were accompanied by changes in brain activity, then it would represent a significant step toward demonstrating the causal efficacy of mental activity on neural circuits. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

If you don't take life seriously,
Life will take you, seriously! — Ana Claudia Antunes

It's very difficult in our society. You cannot impose certain behavioral changes. Education can do it at the right time, probably by high school. After that it is too late. — Luc Montagnier

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent. — Thomas Carlyle

I think I am most fond of the unseen part. I mean that the various cultural experiences that I go through, and the behavioral aspects of getting the work done, are just as important as the installation and the photograph. So, for me, the relationship between the two is more about hybridism and the search for an ideal form that I'm never going to arrive at. The installation and the photograph are mere approximations of this ideal. — Sandy Skoglund

How should the best parts of psychology and economics interrelate in an enlightened economist's mind? ... I think that these behavioral economics ... or economists are probably the ones that are bending them in the correct direction. I don't think it's going to be that hard to bend economics a little to accommodate what's right in psychology. — Charlie Munger

The character of the architectural forms and spaces which all people habitually encounter are powerful agencies in determining the nature of their thoughts, their emotions and their actions, however unconscious of this they may be. — Hugh Ferriss

I thought that the behavioral and some of the profiling stuff was interesting. The thing that I was most interested in, and the thing that we were really adament about, was let's get these guys who were there on tape, or in some kind of way, telling what happened. No one has really talked to them all. — David Fincher

[The question for the behavioral disciplines is simply] what is better, and how do we get there? — Kenneth E. Boulding

Our sinful nature breeds envy, self-sufficiency, entitlement, and transgression. Envy, self-sufficiency, entitlement, and transgression breed isolation. Isolation breeds life problems (emotional, behavioral, rela-tional). — Henry Cloud

The key to behavioral change is to pass behavioral control to the environment. — Paul Gibbons

Behavioral science looking at the criminal, is trying to understand the person's motivation. — David Webb

Others were behavioral. For instance: a potential terrorist was unlikely to withdraw money from an ATM on a Friday afternoon, during Muslim prayer services. — Anonymous

If a child stays quiet in the context of extroverted friends, or even prefers time alone, a parent may worry and even send her to therapy. She might be thrilled - she'll finally get to talk about the stuff she cares about, and without interruption! But if the therapist concludes that the child has a social phobia, the treatment of choice is to increasingly expose her to the situations she fears. This behavioral treatment is effective for treating phobias - if that is truly the problem. If it's not the problem, and the child just likes hanging out inside better than chatting, she'll have a problem soon. Her "illness" now will be an internalized self-reproach: "Why don't I enjoy this like everyone else?" The otherwise carefree child learns that something is wrong with her. She not only is pulled away from her home, she is supposed to like it. Now she is anxious and unhappy, confirming the suspicion that she has a problem. — Laurie A. Helgoe

Retirement savings is probably behavioral economists' greatest success story. It is a prototypical behavioral-economics problem because saving for retirement is cognitively hard - figuring out how much to save - and requires self-control. — Richard Thaler

Some people simply use their faith as a lexicon of behavioral reasoning; without that they would be forced to face their own moral and ethical failings honestly according to a secular code of right and wrong. — Deborah Feldman

Wouldn't economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave? — Dan Ariely

Lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little "decision latitude." Behavioral scientists use this term to describe the choices, and perceived choices, a person has. In a sense, it's another way of describing autonomy - and lawyers are glum and cranky because they don't have much of it. — Daniel H. Pink

Humanism is not a single character. It is a magnificent blend of various emotional and behavioral traits that are unique to the human mind. — Abhijit Naskar

There is no cell culture for depression. You can't see it on a bone scan or an x-ray. Not everyone with depression will show the same behavioral symptoms. — Chris Prentiss

I begin with the premise that behavior is an incredibly important element in medicine. People's habits, their willingness to quit smoking, their willingness to take steps to avoid transmission of HIV, are all behavioral questions. — Harold E. Varmus

Money cannot save you from tragedy, or give you control in a chaotic world. Only God can do that. What breaks the power of money over us is not just redoubled effort to follow the example of Christ. Rather, it is deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ, what you have in him, and then living out the changes that that understanding makes in your heart - the seat of your mind, will, and emotions. Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding and identity, our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without a complete change of heart will be superficial and fleeting. — Timothy Keller

The prevention of emotional and behavioral disorders encompasses intervening in the early years — James M. Kauffman

Behavioral economics tells us that people often focus too much on the wrong things, and tend to focus on aspects of the job that are salient. So, for example, the pay is salient, especially the starting pay. — Alan Krueger

Being a cat means beautiful, agile, innocent, brave, curious and trust also honorable respect for as much as not so doing bribery. — Sekar Arum

If Sally had been in an accident or come down with some overtly physical disease, I would not hesitate to tell him about it, confident that his sympathies would flow in my direction as a matter of course. But psychosis defies empathy; few people who have not experienced it up close buy the idea of a behavioral disease. It has the ring of an excuse, a license for self-absorption on the most extreme scale. It suggests that one chooses madness and not the other way around. (86) — Michael Greenberg

Reciprocal marketing, promotions and links. In public good experiments, behavioral economists have demonstrated that the potential for reciprocal actions by players increases the rate of contribution to the public good, providing evidence for the importance of reciprocity in social situations. — Carl William Brown

Drugs are about dulling perception, about addiction and about behavioral repetition ... What *psychedelics* are about is pattern- dissolving experiences of an extraordinarily high or different awareness. They are the exact opposite of drugs. They promote questioning , they promote consciousness, they promote value examinations, they promote the reconstruction of behavioral patterns. — Terence McKenna

Our subconscious mind stores all our negative beliefs, complexes and behavioral patterns — Sunday Adelaja

As the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner proved in the laboratory, the human mind seeks relationships between events and often finds them even when they are not present. Slot-machines are based on Skinnerian principles of intermittent reinforcement. The dumb human, like the dumb rat, only needs an occasional payoff to keep pulling the handle. The mind will do the rest. — Michael Shermer

So it was all like, Caroline continues to have behavioral problems. She struggling a lot with anger and frustration over not being able to speak (we are frustrated about these things, too, of course, but we have more socially acceptable ways of dealing with our anger). Gus has taken to calling Caroline HULK SMASH, which resonates with the doctors. There's nothing easy about this for any of us. but you take your humor where you can get it. Hoping to go home on Thursday. We'll let you know ... — John Green

Our behaviors reflect what we believe. If we want to change our behavior, we have to change our beliefs. — Patty Houser

An effective follow-up system is the key to an effective coaching process, which will lead to significant behavioral changes. True success is in the follow-up. — Farshad Asl

Every city, every town, every region in USA has these weird things - the way they pronounce words, or what they call soda, or how people drive. It's a huge country, and there's all these strange pockets of behavioral patterns that social anthropologists could spend lifetimes researching and reporting on. — Michael Schur

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, a book that offers an entertaining and engaging overview of behavioral economics. — Daniel H. Pink

Today bursty search patterns explain an amazingly wide range of behavioral phenomena, from how people recall facts stored in their memory to how they locate information on the World Wide Web. In publication after publication, scientists have offered evidence that the most effective strategy for locating a given target is not the one that is the most obvious, systematic, and regular but a search strategy that is bursty, intermittent, and even haphazard. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

When you try to bring about behavioral change by an effort of will, you actually do violence to yourself, and the chances are very good that you will not succeed. This is so universally true that you can actually make money from it. — Srikumar Rao

If the source were simply a few behavioral habits, you would have conquered them already. — Andy Stanley