Fear is the State’s psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.

Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic.

Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group’s normative power to shape the opinions of the...

Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We’re trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.

Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.

I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb...

Our personal identities are socially situated. We are where we live, eat, work, and make love. […]Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or...

Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities,...

One can’t live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us.

Before I knew that a man could kill a man, because it happens all the time. Now I know that even the person with whom you’ve shared food, or whom you’ve slept, even he can...

Jerry-5486: “The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that’s...

If you put good apples into a bad situation, you’ll get bad apples.

The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.

The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.

Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.