Adam Grant Quotes

We all have mental models: the lens through which we see the world that drive our responses to everything we experience. Being aware of your mental models is key to being objective.

Anecdotal experience, unfortunately, trumps scientific evidence.

Scouts always think they're right. They're not right all the time. They don't even know how hard it is. Most of those scouts never played baseball.

When we make decisions based on factors other than the available empirical evidence, we are less than objective, which means we are no longer acting as scientists.

Hindsight bias makes surprises vanish.

Characters are often revealed by the ways they misapprehend others.

I'm a career prosecutor. I have been trained, and my experience over decades, is to make decisions after a review of the evidence and the facts. And not to jump up with grand gestures before I've done that. Some might interpret that as being cautious. I would tell you that's just responsible.

All of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want.

There'll be differences of opinion in just about every intelligence analysis that you make.

If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that sometimes our assumptions and preconceived notions are wrong, and therefore, our interpretation of events is incorrect. This causes us to overreact, to take things personally, or to judge people unfairly.

Experience alone can give a final answer. The knowledge gained in a few years by a commission of the kind suggested would be worth more than volumes of mere assertions and contradictions.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experience. No one can eliminate prejudices—just recognize them.

Most people when they come after you for advice come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.

The sad truth is that many behavioral economists know very little about psychology.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

There are some singers that know exactly when to go, and others hang on much too long and that is the same, that is the same with judges.

I've always been intrigued by why people believe one thing over another.

Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.

The new censors sincerely mistake their own interpretations of the facts for the facts themselves. Their opinions, filtered unconsciously through biases and experience, are, to them, simply information. Their views aren’t “views” at all but raw data. Competing interpretations of the facts can be only one thing: misinformation. Or, if it’s deliberate, disinformation.

Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.

You must have the confidence to override people with more credentials than you whose cognition is impaired by incentive-caused bias or some similar psychological force that is obviously present. But there are also cases where you have to recognize that you have no wisdom to add - and that your best course is to trust some expert.

There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgment when used to give an opinion on our own works. It is sound in judging the work of our enemies but not that of our friends, for hate and love are two of the most powerfully motivating factors found among living things.

The older I get, the less I negotiate. When you first start out, it's 90 percent negotiation and 10 percent suggestion. When you get to a certain point, those figures reverse.

You should just evaluate the work and make your judgments accordingly. That's the way you do it in life and every other subject.

Part of what I do is a craft, but part of what I do is a science. And I guess the craft comes in knowing what science to use and what science not to use.