Behavioral Psychology Quotes

Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome

The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.

People say, "I wish I had more motivation today, because then I would try something." But our thinking is backward. The way our brain works is that dopamine - the so-called feel-good chemical - is released the second we actually do something. So the motivation doesn't come before, it comes after.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.

Knowing what to do and not doing it is the same as not knowing what to do.

I was a physical education major with a child psychology minor at Temple, which means if you ask me a question about a child's behavior, I will advise you to tell the child to take a lap.

I think I'm becoming a psychologist in explaining the Republican Party. It's the only way you can explain 'em. It's psychological.

Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.

When you realize that people treat you according to how they see themselves rather than how you really are, you are less likely to be affected by their behavior.

I'm fascinated by human agency - by the process of decision, both in the individual and the mass.

Sometimes I'm like, Wow, 'Criminal Minds' is deep.

Only a habit can subdue another habit.

What people CAN do is very different from what they WILL do.

Belief creates behaviors.

Regulation is very much informed by behavioral economics.

Mat had tried to make her say she saw a hat floating around Mat's head. That would persuade Tuon to stop trying to get rid of his, would it not?

People are always willing to follow advice when it accords with their own wishes.

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.

The final war will be between Pavlov's dog and Schoedinger's Cat.

You will not persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.

Action is the 'bridge' between the inner world and the outer world.

I fantasized about being a psychology major when I first started school, and I took a handful of Psych 101 classes.

The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.