Elliot Aronson Quotes

“A teenager may dread going to school with a pimple on his forehead or on a bad hair day because 'everyone will notice'. Thomas Gilovich and his associates have found, however, that such worries are often greatly exaggerated.”

“Anyone who is awake nowadays knows that Republicans and Democrats seem to disagree on most issues — and neither side seems able to be persuaded by the other. Why? After analyzing the data from 44 years of studies and more than 22,000 people in the United States and Europe, John Jost and his associates have concluded that these disagreements are not simply philosophic disputes about how, say, to end poverty or fix schools; they reflect different ways of thinking, different levels of tolerance for uncertainty, and core personality traits, which is why conservatives and liberals are usually not persuaded by the same kinds of arguments.

As a result of such evidence, some evolutionary psychologists maintain that ideological belief systems may have evolved in human societies to be organized along a left–right dimension, consisting of two core sets of attitudes:
(1) whether a person advocates social change or supports the system as it is, and
(2) whether a person thinks inequality is a result of human policies and can be overcome or is inevitable and should be accepted as part of the natural order.”

“Aronson's first law:
People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy.”

“Communication for the purpose of persuasion affects a person who is affected by the feeling that he or she does not respond more than one who views himself or herself with satisfaction.”

“Conservatives prefer the familiar; liberals prefer the unusual. Every society, to survive, would have done best with both kinds of citizens, but you can see why liberals and conservatives argue so emotionally over issues such as income inequality and gay marriage. They are not only arguing about the specific issue, but also about underlying assumptions and values that emerge from their personality traits. It is important to stress that these are general tendencies.”

“Evolutionary psychologists point out that both sets of attitudes would have had adaptive benefits over the millennia: Conservatism would have promoted stability, tradition, order, and the benefits of hierarchy, whereas liberalism would have promoted rebelliousness, change, flexibility, and the benefits of equality.”

“Human beings aren't rational animals; we're rationalizing animals who want to appear reasonable to ourselves.”

“If passionate love is like cocaine, then companionate is more like a glass of fine wine - something delicious and pleasurable, but with fewer health palpitations and less mania.”

“If Sam gets a statement different from his own opinion, if his self-esteem is high, he has to decide when he will be more right: if he changes his position, or if he continues to stick to the original. In this way, you may experience conflict if you do not agree with a communicator who is highly credible.

If, on the other hand, Sam has a low self-esteem, he’s pretty much not going through a conflict situation - since he doesn’t hold himself too high, he feels he has a better chance of being right if he accepts the communicator’s claims.
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“If someone doesn’t like themselves, they don’t attach too much value to their opinions either. It follows that when his thoughts are questioned, he will not stubbornly cling to them.”

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something in nature that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.

Aristotle, Politics, c. 328 BC”

“Most people enjoy stability and change in their lives, perhaps in different proportion at different ages; many people will change their minds in response to new situations and experiences, as was the case in the acceptance of gay marriage; and until relatively recently in American society, the majority of members of both political parties were willing to compromise and seek common ground in passing legislation. Still, such differences in basic orientation help explain the frustrating fact that liberals and conservatives so rarely succeed in hearing one another, let alone in changing one another’s minds.”

“News is a form of entertainment.”

“Perhaps more people would be inclined to take action if, like the stereotypical terrorist, global warming had a moustache.”

“Self-justification is not only about protecting high self-esteem; it's also about protecting low self-esteem if that is how a person sees himself.”

“The American mind in particular has been trained to equate success with victory, to equate doing well with beating someone.”

“The clearest personality variable of influence is self-esteem.”

“The more similar a person seems to you in attitudes, opinions, and interests, the more you like the person. Opposites may attract, but they don't stick.”

“The person who is easiest to brainwash is the person whose beliefs are based on slogans that have never been seriously challenged.”

“We know that people strive to make their knowledge a reality.”

“What do Hitler's inner circle, Nixon's close advisers, and NASA administrators have in common, aside from the fact that they made terrible decisions? Each was a relatively cohesive group isolated from dissenting points of view.”