41 quotes found
"To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us."
"I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores."
"The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures."
"In 1879, American economist Francis Walker tried to explain why members of his profession were in such "bad odor amongst real people". He blamed it on their inability to understand why human behavior fails to comply with economic theory. We do not always act the way economists think we should, mainly because we're both less selfish and less rational than economists think we are. Economists are being indoctrinated into a cardboard version of human nature, which they hold true to such a degree that their own behavior has begun to resemble it. Psychological tests have shown that economics majors are more egoistic than the average college student. Exposure in class after class to the capitalist self-interest model apparently kills off whatever prosocial tendencies these students have to begin with. They give up trusting others, and conversely others give up trusting them. Hence the bad odor."
"Don’t believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or by keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. This applies most definitely to pack hunters, such as wolves or killer whales, but also our closest relatives, the primates. In a study in Taï National Park, in Ivory Coast, chimpanzees took care of group mates wounded by leopards, licking their blood, carefully removing dirt, and waving away flies that came near the wounds. They protected injured companions, and slowed down during travel in order to accommodate them. All of this makes perfect sense given that chimpanzees live in groups for a reason, the same way wolves and humans are group animals for a reason. If man is wolf to man, he is so in every sense, not just the negative one. We would not be where we are today had our ancestors been socially aloof. What we need is a complete overhaul of assumptions about human nature. Too many economists and politicians model human society on the perpetual struggle they believe exists in nature, but which is a mere projection. Like magicians, they first throw their ideological prejudices into the hat of nature, then pull them out by their very ears to show how much nature agrees with them. It’s a trick for which we have fallen for too long. Obviously, competition is part of the picture, but humans can’t live by competition alone."
"I first saw them in 1978. At the time, I knew a lot about chimps, because I had been studying them. I saw the bonobos at a zoo in Holland, and I thought immediately, they're totally different. The sense you get looking them in the eyes is that they're more sensitive, more sensual, not necessarily more intelligent, but there's a high emotional awareness, so to speak, of each other and also of people who look at them."
"At the time, I was interested in reconciliation after fights, and I wanted to know how bonobos did it compared to chimpanzees. Very soon I discovered that they were much more sexual in everything they did, and that interested me — not so much for the sex part, even though that became a very hot topic, the peacemaking-through-sex thing — but much more how they have such a peaceful society, because they are much less violent than chimpanzees."
"If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, and war takes place only a small part of the time. Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships."
"It is true that the chimpanzee is dominance-oriented, violent, territorial. But it's also cooperative in many ways, and so that side is sometimes forgotten. The bonobo is sensual, sensitive, sexual, a peacemaker, but also can have a nasty side, and that's sometimes forgotten. So both species are sort of the ends of the spectrum, and we fall somewhere in between. Clearly, we have both of these sides in us, and that's why I sometimes call us "the bipolar apes.""
"I would say there are people in this world who like hierarchies, they like to keep people in their place, they like law enforcement, and they probably have a lot in common, let's say, with the chimpanzee. And then you have other people in this world who root for the underdog, they give to the poor, they feel the need to be good, and they maybe have more of this kinder bonobo side to them. Our societies are constructed around the interface between those two, so we need both actually."
"Imagine that we didn't know the chimpanzee, that all we knew were those bonobos who have sex all the time and are peaceful and female-dominated and that people would say that this is our only close relative. I think we would have totally different theories about ourselves and our background. But, of course, it didn't happen that way."
"I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years."
"I think we can defend the view that there are two different sorts of moral gap, an ‘affection gap’ and a ‘performance gap’. The affection gap is that non-human animals do not have what Duns Scotus calls ‘the affection for justice’, which is a pull towards what is good in itself, regardless of any relation to us. The performance gap is that we do not find in ourselves the innate capacity to live consistently by the affection for justice by merely human devices. ... De Waal says that the doctrine of original sin has been refuted and that we are not sinfully self-centered but ‘we are driven to empathize with others in an automated, often unconditional fashion. We genuinely care about others, wanting to see them happy and healthy regardless of what immediate good this may do for us.’ However, he agrees that we do not find in non-human animals morality itself, though we do find kin selection, so-called ‘reciprocal altruism’, and social control. This admits the affection gap. He also agrees that human beings, despite formal protestations to the contrary and despite our innate goodness, put self and its kin first, then the ingroup, and the idea of being moral towards individuals from other groups is very recent and very fragile. As far as I can see, this is the performance gap."
"Ik heb de fout gemaakt dat ik de waarheid naar mijn hand heb willen zetten en de wereld net iets mooier wilde maken dan hij is."
"Als ik slimmer was geweest, had ik regelmatig onderzoek Iaten mislukken. Dat was realistischer, rationeler en sluwer geweest. Maar dat kon ik niet. Ik was een junkie geworden."
"About replication. See replication crisis. From the authorized english translation by Nicholas J.L. Brown available as a free download in PDF format"
"is defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally."
"Values are a broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others."
"Culture is the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others."
"Cross-cultural studies presuppose a systems approach, by which I mean that any element of the total system called ``culture’’ should be eligible for analysis, regardless of the discipline that usually deals with such elements. At the level of (national) cultures, these are phenomena on all levels: individuals, groups, organizations, or society as a whole may be relevant. There is no excuse for overlooking any vital factor because it is usually treated in someone else’s department at the university."
"Individualism implies a loosely knit social framework in which people are supposed to take care of themselves and of their immediate families only."
"Individualism pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family."
"Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people's lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty."
"All societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others."
"Individualism denotes the relationship between the individual and the collectivity which prevails in a given society."
"What Machiavelli did not write but what the association between political systems and citizens' mental software suggests is that which animal the ruler should impersonate depends strongly on what animals the followers are."
"In most collectivist cultures, direct confrontation of another person is considered rude and undesirable. The word no is seldom used, because saying “no” is a confrontation; “you may be right” and “we will think about it” are examples of polite ways of turning down a request. In the same vein, the word yes should not necessarily be inferred as an approval, since it is used to maintain the line of communication: “yes, I heard you” is the meaning it has in Japan."
"Narcissism is often the driving force behind the desire to obtain a leadership position. Perhaps individuals with strong narcissistic personality features are more willing to undertake the arduous process of attaining a position of power."
"The economic crisis was a reflection of narcissism and very primitive defense mechanisms (such as a complete denial of economic reality) built into the financial system. The best and brightest MBA students have been going into investment banking; many of them used their brains essentially to play casino games, and not to add much value to society."
"To some extent, of course, we are all impostors. We play roles on the stage of life, presenting a public self that differs from the private self we share with intimates and morphing both selves as circumstances demand. Displaying a facade is part and parcel of the . Indeed, one reason the feeling of being an impostor is so widespread is that society places enormous pressure on people to stifle their real selves."
"Neurotic impostor CEOs are also highly likely to become addicted to consulting companies because reassurances provided by “impartial” outsiders compensate for the executives’ feelings of insecurity."
"Fearing discovery of their “fraudulence,” they burden themselves with too much work to compensate for their lack of self-esteem and identity. Work/life balance is a meaningless concept to them."
"Despite the proven benefits of emotional intelligence, organizational life has typically been hostile to the inner world of feeling. Rationality is deemed superior to feeling, which can contaminate judgment. But without feeling there is no passion, and no action."
"To some extent, of course, we're all impostors—we all play roles when on the stage of life, presenting a different public self than the private self we share with intimates, and morphing both selves as circumstances demand. Displaying a facade and misleading our audience are defensive behaviors learned early."
"CEOS who are neurotic impostors are also likely to become addicted to consulting companies."
"Restructuring is a favorite tactic of antisocials who have reached a senior position in an organization. The chaos that results is an ideal smokescreen for dysfunctional leadership. Failure at the top goes unnoticed, while the process of restructuring creates the illusion of a strong, creative hand on the helm."
"A theory of haptics is expounded which the author feels will establish "a foundation for the Haptics of form and the psychology of the blind." He differentiates between "Haptics of an essentially optical character" and "pure or autonomous Haptics" such as is experienced by those blind from early childhood. The weaknesses of certain psychological theories such as Gestalt, are discussed in terms of Révész's haptic theory. Part II of the book analyzes the aesthetics of haptic form and the art of the blind. The work of blind sculptors is presented and is analyzed."
"For professional musicians, musicologists, and serious students, knowledge of the psychology of music is extremely valuable but sometimes hard to come by. In this practical and authoritative study which pulls together information from musicology, physics, physiology, psychology, and aesthetics the distinguished Hungarian psychologist Geza Revesz (1878 1955) offers a comprehensive view of the subject, including an overview of his own extensive, often revolutionary research in both music psychology and acoustics."
"Ebbinghaus: Language is a system of conventional signs that can be voluntarily produced at any time."
"Three of the pioneers of European psychology, who became linked in friendship at the beginning of the century at G. E. Muller's Laboratory have died the last two years: David Katz..., ... and now Géza Révész... Revesz had to leave his native Hungary, at the time of Horthy's coup de force in 1919, and, having become a Dutch citizen and professor at the University of Amsterdam, he too founded a Psychological Institute — probably the largest in Europe, with its forty rooms and an auditorium — which, just before his death, he had left on becoming emeritus."
"Révész's work encompassed varied fields. His early interest centered on visual perception, and later he concerned himself with the psychological aspects of music. He carried out tests on the sense of touch, and identified those elements of tactile perception that are not shared by the optic and acoustic senses. This research brought him in contact with blind persons, and Revesz, in part moved by sympathy, conducted studies on the personal life of the blind. He also devoted himself to understanding the basic differences between humans and animals, in which connection he produced his study on the origins of languages."