The Influential Mind Quotes

“The Twelve Most Common Phobias   1. Arachnophobia: the fear of spiders   2. Ophidiophobia: the fear of snakes   3. Acrophobia: the fear of heights   4. Agoraphobia: the fear of open or crowded spaces   5. Cynophobia: the fear of dogs   6. Astraphobia: the fear of thunder or lightning   7. Claustrophobia: the fear of small spaces like elevators, cramped rooms, and other enclosed places   8. Mysophobia: the fear of germs   9. Aerophobia: the fear of flying 10. Trypophobia: the fear of holes 11. Carcinophobia: the fear of cancer 12. Thanatophobia: the fear of death”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“The number of people who suffer from hole phobia apparently trumps the number who suffer from cancer phobia, which is number 11 on the list, while the fear of death itself sits at number 12.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“IKEA effect.”24 The IKEA effect concerns the observation that people value things they create themselves more than the exact same items created by someone else. For example, if you put together an IKEA shelf yourself, you tend to think it is better than the exact same shelf put together by someone else.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“What is interesting is that the sense of control need only be that—a perception. It is better to guide people toward ultimate solutions while at the same time maintaining their sense of agency, rather than to give orders.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“Seeking out and interpreting data in a way that strengthens our preestablished opinions is known as the “confirmation bias.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“When you provide someone with new data, they quickly accept evidence that confirms their preconceived notions (what are known as prior beliefs) and assess counterevidence with a critical eye. Because we are often exposed to contradicting information and opinions, this tendency will generate polarization, which will expand with time as people receive more and more information.7”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“Consider the numbers: there are 3 billion Internet users worldwide; every day we produce approximately 2.5 billion gigabytes of data, perform 4 billion Google searches, and watch 10 billion YouTube videos. In the short time it took you to read the last sentence, approximately 530,243 new Google searches were executed and 1,184,390 YouTube videos played around the globe.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“in fact, in most cases, inducing hope is more powerful. However, under two conditions, fear works well: (a) when what you are trying to induce is inaction and (b) when the person in front of you is already anxious.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“The volunteers in our study would discard their own correct beliefs and adopt the false ones of others as long as everyone in the group, unanimously, supported the wrong answer. Yet if one other person gave the correct answer, the volunteers would stick to their original beliefs. In other words, even in a swarm, one divergent voice can cause others to act independently. You are influenced by others, but do not be fooled—others are also influenced by you. This is why your actions and choices matter not only for your own life but for the behavior of those around you.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“when a volunteer learned of other people’s answers to the test questions, their amygdala was activated. The amygdala then communicated with a nearby region that is essential for creating memories—the hippocampus—and that interaction resulted in changes to how the person remembered the film.13 We found that these socially induced changes to memory could subsequently be corrected by frontal lobe activity.14 When participants in our experiment later discovered that we had provided them with the fake recollections of others, those with highly active frontal lobes were able to recover their original memory of the movie. But this correction did not always work. When your amygdala reacts very strongly to other people’s opinions, it triggers a biological reaction that prevents your frontal lobes from subsequently correcting false beliefs. When the volunteers in our experiment went along with the false recollections of others, about half the time they truly came to believe that those recollections were correct. They were not simply agreeing to save face or avoid conflict; their memory trace was physically altered.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

“if you suspect that there is uncomfortable news behind door number 1, you may be better off opening it to reveal the truth. This is because we humans are much more resilient than we think. By opening the door we can start the process of acceptance, healing, and rebuilding. If the door remains shut we are stuck, lingering in a constant state of unease.”
― Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others