Robert Sapolsky Quotes

Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action.

I think that you form the way that you act from others around you; it's a kind of an environmental thing.

To acquire behavior, the student must engage in behavior

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted.

We are what we see. We are products of our surroundings.

Obviously, all of us have been influenced by those around us.

You are not going to change the minds of people who are looking for attention.

We are such a product of our upbringing and environment.

None of us is immune to suggestion. We are social beings and live in a social world.

The question is the propriety of how we go about influencing and changing behavior.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.

It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political, and moral beliefs that control our actions.

Of course, Behaviorism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling from others.

We're able to use certain techniques to get people to behave in certain ways. We're able to use certain techniques to make it look like we're reading minds, even though we're not.

Psychologically, when you hear something a number of times, you start to believe it.

The only way on Earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

I'm a product of my environment.

The most dramatic instances of directed behavior change and "mind control" are not the consequence of exotic forms of influence, such as hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, or "brainwashing," but rather the systematic manipulation of the most mundane aspects of human nature over time in confining settings.

I do not know how anyone can mould anyone.

It turns out we are all quite easily swayed if someone knows what they are doing - which is a great thing and a dangerous thing.

Human beings can only make sense of the world through the lens they were socialized to make sense of it through.

Suggestibility is a very loose term. You may not be the sort of person who responds well to a hypnotist on stage, but you might find, for example, that a doctor administering a placebo to you is something you respond well to.

Men. They were all so incredibly easy to sway. Pat them on their heads, give them something to eat, and they'll follow you anywhere. Add a smile and a few stupid compliments, and they'll immediately forget all about their other responsibilities.

When ideas are communicated effectively, people follow and change.