Psychologists From The United States

"His ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning, and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the face of the tragedies we are currently facing. ...His egregious ...mishandling of the current catastrophe has led to a level of pushback and scrutiny that he's never experienced before, increasing his belligerence and need for petty revenge as he withholds vital funding... from... governors who don't kiss his ass sufficiently."

"[[Lying|[L]ies]], misrepresentations, and fabrications are the sum total of who my uncle is..."

"Donald today is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information."

"Donald's need for affirmation is so great that he doesn't seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn't condescend to be seen with outside of a rally."

"Thus, logic and mathematics are important in determining “what is,” though not necessarily implying what is. “What is” must be consistent with logic, namely, with “what could be.” Why? I don’t know. To me one of the great mysteries of life is that by simply thinking logically we can determine a lot about the universe—or at least conclude what can’t be, which together with empirical observation leads us to some pretty good ideas about what is."

"Many people operate as if there are two separate and equal sources of information—the self and others, where the number of others is irrelevant. The result is a “truly” false-consensus effect in the context of knowing one’s own plus a certain number of others’ responses."

"A particular example (i. e., of irrationality) involves interviews. Despite all the evidence about the uselessness of interviews in predicting future behavior, people remain convinced that some people—especially themselves—are superb at “psyching out” other people during an interview. In contrast, the research indicates that interviews are effective only insofar as they yield information they could more consistently and more validly be incorporated into a statistical model. One problem, of course, that leads to the belief in the superiority of the unstructured interview is that it is, in fact, not studied; there is almost no systematic feedback to most interviewers. Much of the time, the interviewer is in a particular position in an organization and never sees the interviewee again. Second, if the interviewer does see the interviewee later, then that means that the interviewee has been accepted, which often implies fairly reasonable performance. Moreover, it is always possible to rationalize failures."

"It is taken for granted that in actual design form should be used to reinforce meaning, and not to negative it."

"...different observers will all find perceptual material which is congenial to their own particular way of looking at the world. While one man may recognize a street by its brick pavement, another will remember its sweeping curve, and a third will have located the minor landmarks along its length."

"The contemporary urban area has man-made characteristics and problems that often override the specificity of site. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that the specific character of a site is now perhaps as much the result of human action and desires as of the original geological structure."

"Any existing, functioning urban area has structure and identity, even if only in weak measure...A frequent problem is the sensitive reshaping of an already existing environment: discovering and preserving its strong images, solving its perceptual difficulties, and, above all, drawing out the structure and identity latent in the confusion."

"Leisure is now possible for many , and customs of timing are more obvious and less absolute. Time has become both more valuable and also more subject to reallocation."

"...education in seeing will be quite important as the reshaping of what is seen. Indeed, they together form a circular, or hopefully a spiral, process: visual education impelling the citizen to act upon his visual world, and this action causing him to see even more acutely. A highly developed art of urban design is linked to the creation of a critical and attentive audience. If art and audience grow together, then our cities will be a source of daily enjoyment to millions of their inhabitants."

"...a distinctive and legible environment not only offers security but also heightens the potential depth and intensity of human experience."

"...the function of a good visual environment may not be simply to facilitate routine trips, nor to support meanings and feelings already possessed. Quite as important may be its role as a guide and a stimulus for new exploration."

"In a complex society, there are may interrelations to be mastered...If an environment has strong visible framework and highly characteristic parts, then exploration of new sectors is both easier and more inviting."

"“An environment that facilitates recalling and learning is a way of linking the living moment to a wide span of time. Being alive is being awake in the present, secure in our ability to continue but alert to the new things that come streaming by. We feel our own rhythm, and feel also that it is part of the rhythm of the world. It is when local time, local place, and our own selves are secure that we are ready to face challenge, complexity, vast space, and the enormous future.”"

"Concepts of size may depend in part on how well a structure can be grasped."

"If we examine the feelings that accompany daily life, we find that historic monuments occupy a small place."

"Choosing a past helps us to construct a future."

"There must also be some random accumulations to enable us to discover unexpected relationships. But serendipity is possible only when recollection is essentially a holding fast to what is meaningful and a release of what is not."

"We prefer a world that can be modified progressively, against a background of valued remains, a world in which one can leave a personal mark alongside the marks of history."

"To attempt to preserve all of the past would be life-denying."

"An environment that cannot be changed invites its own destruction."

"Like law and custom, environment tells us how to act without requiring of us a conscious choice. In a church we are reverent and on a beach we are relaxed."

"Accumulated literary associations add depth to the experience; place names become pegs for layers of commentaries, as in the Chinese culture. But at base the emotional pleasure is a heightened sense of the flow of time."

"The remote past is different, since it does not threaten the present."

"Speculation must wait upon the facts."

"Doubtless the day is far in the future when we shall be able to solve such historical enigmas."

"Handwriting, bearing as it does the cachet of individuality, has always interested those to whom things human make their intimate appeal. Curious observations relative to it have long been current, the existence, for instance, of national as well as family and personal chirographics; the perversions of it that take form as mirror writing or even—it is said—as inverted writing; the whimsy shown by the bizarre characters, by the tendency to irrelevant and extravagant flourishes in the writing of those suffering from certain forms of mental disorder. Attention has been called to the similarity existing between a man's handwriting and the manner in which he walks or gesticulates. It has been claimed that age and sex and profession leave their impress upon writing, that the pen craft of the painter mirrors minutely the grace and distinction that marks the sweep of his brush across the canvas."

"The handwriting of any individual would be found to resemble the characteristic tracings shown by his pulse and respiration and fatigue curves. Nor is the interest in the variational aspect of handwriting restricted to recording the diversities in penmanship from individual to individual; it is also engaged in noting variations from day to day in the handwriting of any given person under the influence of fatigue or emotion or disease. But, however numerous, such observations and however legitimate the speculations they engender, it remains for the physiologist and the psychologist, with the aid perhaps of the sociologist, to compass the scientific study of the variational factor in handwriting."

"A resume of the work that has already been done has perhaps its value at the present time."

"We are here brought face to face with the old question that has confronted all investigators of sex-differences. It is evident, however, that the question of the social environment is, in this instance, a controlling one not merely in the discussion of the revelation of sex in handwriting, but also in that of the revelation of intelligence; for there exists a peculiar environment for talent as well as for sex. Indeed, it appears that the investigation of handwriting must be socio-psychological in nature. Unconscious imitation, social suggestibility doubtless play an important, if not all-important, part in determining writing characteristics. On the whole, therefore, it is not surprising that the experts were more successful in distinguishing marked differences in intelligence than in determining the nature of the individual superiority. They perceived the class characteristic, as it were."

"Variation in the amplitude of written characters involves doubtless many important considerations relative to the facilitation and inhibition of movement."

"Writing with attention preoccupied or distracted results variously in the enlargement or dwarfing of characters, an alternative result that seems to depend upon deep-seated tendencies of the individual."

"If it should be shown further that this difference cuts through all the mental activities of the human being, progress would have been made in the difficult matter of the classification of mental types."

"In any case it is evident that there is a psychology as well as a sociology of handwriting. Tremendously complicated as the problem of diagnosis of individual traits from those tiny strokes of the pen appears, it is yet a legitimate problem of science; for the more progress psychology makes, the more evident it becomes that there is not a mode of expression which is not rooted to its finest detail in the complex psycho-physical organism. Meanwhile, it is fortunate that the task of identifying graphic signs should not be left wholly to the intuitions of the graphologist. Experimental work that seeks to induce variation in writing through a control of outer conditions must in time correlate certain definite variations in conditions with variation in such aspects of writing as size, speed, accuracy in alignment, inequality of control and the like."

"The relation of the inner word to the outer visible one has long interested psychologists."

"Variation in expression under emotional disturbance has long been a special subject of experiment. Little attempt, however, has been made to compare the results so obtained with the appearance of writing under emotional tension. To be sure, the graphologists cite a tendency to elevate progressively the line of writing as an evidence of mental exaltation, of joy or ambition, while a fall in the alignment is indicative of the depressive emotions, self-distrust, sadness, melancholy. Again, a strongly marked tendency toward centrifugal or centripetal movements is held to indicate, on the one hand, ardor, simplicity, activity, uprightness, and, on the other hand, slowness, lack of spontaneity, egoism."

"I am angry that people are sold a message of second chances and forgiveness that allows toxic and narcissistic people to continue to do cruel things and say cruel things with impunity."

"Unfortunately, we have gotten to a place where taking responsibility has become more about apologizing after the fact, rather than weighing out what we want to do and thinking about the ramifications ahead of time."

"DNA isn’t all that matters but it matters more than everything else put together."

"We now know that DNA differences are the major systematic source of psychological differences between us. Environmental effects are important but what we have learned in recent years is that they are mostly random – unsystematic and unstable – which means that we cannot do much about them."

"Understanding how DNA makes us who we are will teach us to be more tolerant of each other."

"Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” He claims that these “flow experiences” comprise many of the best moments of our lives. Complete absorption in an intriguing, thought-provoking text is an ideal way to enter this state."

"When an athlete’s body and mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something challenging, such as shooting 60 in the final round of the Scottish Open, as Brandon Stone did last week, they are said to be in a state of flow. This almost intangible performance experience speaks directly to the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced: Me high? Cheeks send me high!). His suggestion was that people find genuine satisfaction when they are completely immersed in an activity that requires their creative abilities, in order to be successful on that task... Interestingly, since the introduction of ‘flow’ in the 1970s, it has become somewhat of a mystical, mythical part of sports performance."

"The best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

"Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves."

"The 8 Characteristics of Flow"

"Psychologists tend to see creativity exclusively as a mental process [but] creativity is as much a cultural and social as it is a psychological event. Therefore what we call creativity is not the product of single individuals, but of social systems making judgements about individual’s products. Any definition of creativity that aspires to objectivity, and therefore requires an intersubjective dimension, will have to recognise the fact that the audience is as important to its constitution as the individual to whom it is credited."