What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?
What troubles me is the Internet and the electronic technology revolution. Shyness is fueled in part by so many people spending huge amounts of time alone, isolated on e-mail, in chat rooms, which reduces their face-to-face contact with other people.
There are no limits to what I would do to make my classes exciting, interesting, unpredictable.
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.
The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life.
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.
The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.
Prejudice and discrimination have always been a big part of my life. When I was 6, I got beat up and called dirty Jew boy because they thought I looked Jewish.
Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.
One can’t live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us.