“Negative emotions don’t just cause negative thoughts, they cause excessively negative thoughts, that reflect a distorted picture of reality. Anxiety causes us to overestimate how dangerous things are, depression makes our situation seem hopeless, and anger makes small slights seem like major attacks…”— Spencer Greenberg, spencergreenberg.com
“Researchers found that teenagers are more likely than adults to plead guilty to crimes they’re innocent of, due to differences in how they assess the incentives of a reduced sentence.”— Brian Gallagher, nautil.us
“The election had an apocalyptic feel to it. There was a way in which Trump was funny, so you could be apocalyptic and funny at the same time. It’s a strange combination, but it’s somehow very powerful psychologically.”— Peter Thiel, nytimes.com
“Writing in centuries past, many scientists felt compelled to wax poetic about cosmic mysteries and God's handiwork. Perhaps one should not be surprised at this: most scientists back then, as well as many scientists today, identify themselves as spiritually devout. But a careful reading of older text…”— Neil deGrasse Tyson, haydenplanetarium.org
“To cope with the conflict between hope and reality, our culture should teach us good integration skills, prompting us to accept with a little more grace what is imperfect in ourselves – and then, by extension, in others. We should be gently reminded that no one we can love will ever satisfy us compl…”— Alain de Botton, thebookoflife.org
“It’s a huge psychological achievement to accept other humans in their bewildering mixture of good and bad, capacity to assist us and to frustrate us, kindness and meanness – and to see that, far more than we’re inclined to imagine in our furious or ecstatic moments, most people belong in that slight…”— Alain de Botton, thebookoflife.org
“Human beings have many natural tendencies that need to be vigilantly monitored in the context of modern life. For example, our craving for fat, salt and sugar, which served us well when food was scarce, can lead us astray in an environment in which fat, salt and sugar are all too plentiful and heavi…”— Zeynep Tufekci, nytimes.com
“Self-forgiveness and self-compassion are both related to less procrastination, not more. The study I’ve summarized today suggests that one of the effects of self-compassion may well be to reduce ruminative brooding—those repetitive negative thoughts about the past—and allow us to let go and move for…”— Timothy A Pychyl, psychologytoday.com
“Procrastination is best understood as an emotion-focused coping strategy. We use task avoidance to escape negative emotions associated with a task (e.g., frustration, boredom, stress, anxiety). As colleagues have explained so well before, 'we give in to feel good,' prioritizing the management of ave…”— Timothy A Pychyl, psychologytoday.com
“This is why it makes sense that liberal politicians intuitively portray danger as manageable — recall FDR’s famous Great Depression era reassurance of “nothing to fear but fear itself,” echoed decades later in Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address — and why President Trump and other Republ…”— John Bargh, washingtonpost.com
“Conservatives, it turns out, react more strongly to physical threat than liberals do. In fact, their greater concern with physical safety seems to be determined early in life: In one University of California study, the more fear a 4-year-old showed in a laboratory situation, the more conservative hi…”— John Bargh, washingtonpost.com
“If you want to make any permanent change in your life, willpower won’t get you there. Whether you want to get healthier, stop using social media so much, improve your relationships, be happier, write a book, or start a business — willpower won’t help you with any of these things. Personal progress a…”— Benjamin Hardy, medium.com
“According to psychological research, your willpower is like a muscle. It’s a finite resource that depletes with use. As a result, by the end of your strenuous days, your willpower muscles are exhausted and you’re left to your naked and defenseless self — with zero control to stop the night-time munc…”— Benjamin Hardy, medium.com
“What determines your success isn’t 'What do you want to enjoy?' The question is, 'What pain do you want to sustain?' The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experienc…”— Mark Manson, markmanson.net
“The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma.”— Walt Dohrn, Paul Tibbitt, Merriwether Williams, Patrick Star, Bill Fagerbakke, imdb.com
“When you move slower than the world, and breathe more deeply than the world, you awaken a consciousness beyond any world.”— Matt Kahn, amazon.com
“The flip side of all of this: Epley notes that just as we’re more likely to anthropomorphize and name certain objects, there are also certain conditions that make us more inclined to dehumanize something. In Epley’s 2016 study on voice and anthropomorphizing, his team also found that when we strip a…”— Stephanie Bucklin, thecut.com
“Such studies indicate that, when we’re able to form some sort of connection with technology (or more specifically, project a connection onto it), we tend to view them as more humanlike — which may, in turn, make us more likely to give them a human name.”— Stephanie Bucklin, thecut.com