Psychology Quotes

“Magician James Randi has used this empirical approach when testing those claiming to see glowing auras around people’s bodies:
Randi: Do you see an aura around my head?
Aura seer: Yes, indeed.
Randi: Can you still see the aura if I put this magazine in front of my face?
Aura seer: Of course.
Randi: Then if I were to step behind a wall barely taller than I am, you could determine my location from the aura visible above my
head, right?
Randi once told me that no aura seer has agreed to take this simple test.”
― David G. Myers, Psychology

“Although history may therefore seem like a series of inevitable events, the actual future is seldom foreseen.”
― David G. Myers, Psychology

“Harvard astronomer Owen Gingerich (2006) reported that there are more than 100 billion galaxies. One of these, our own relative speck of a galaxy, has a few hundred billion stars, many of which, like our Sun-star, are circled by planets. On the scale of outer space, we are less than a single grain of sand on all the oceans’ beaches, and our lifetime but a relative nanosecond.”
― David G. Myers, Psychology

“As morning approaches, body temperature rises, then peaks during the day, dips for a time in early afternoon (when many people take siestas), and begins to drop again in the evening. Thinking is sharpest and memory most accurate when we are at our daily peak in circadian arousal. Try pulling an all - nighter or working an occasional night shift. You’ll feel groggiest in the middle of the night but may gain new energy when your normal wake - up time arrives.”
― David G. Myers, Psychology

“By one estimate, your five senses take in 11,000,000 bits of information per second, of which you consciously process about 40 (Wilson, 2002).”
― David G. Myers, Psychology

“Experiments show that when you move your wrist at will, you consciously experience the decision to move it about 0.2 seconds before the actual movement (Libet, 1985, 2004).But your brain waves jump about 0.35 seconds before you consciously perceive your decision to move (FIGURE 3.4)! The startling conclusion: Consciousness sometimes arrives late to the decision-making party.”
― David G. Myers, Psychology

“Good ideas in psychology usually have an oddly familiar quality, and the moment we encounter them we feel certain that we once came close to thinking the same thing ourselves and simply failed to write it down.”
― David G. Myers, Psychology

“At any moment, you and I are aware of little more than what’s on the screen of our consciousness. But beneath the surface, unconscious information processing occurs simultaneously on many parallel tracks.”
― David G. Myers, Psychology