Social behavior Quotes by Robert M. Sapolsky

“Secure-attachment 7Rs show more generosity than average. Thus 7R has something to do with generosity—but its effect is entirely context dependent.”

— Robert M. Sapolsky

But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Finally, for the same criminal conviction, the more stereotypically Af-rican a black individual’s facial features, the longer the sentence.15 In contrast, juries view black…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“So testosterone does subtle things to behavior. Nonetheless, this doesn’t tell us much because everything can be interpreted every which way. Testosterone increases anxiety—you…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“pain makes aggressive people more aggressive, while doing the opposite to unaggressive individuals.”

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Thus, for our purposes, genes aren’t about inevitability. Instead they’re about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities. All embedded in the fabric of the…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“In other words, the more genomically complex the organism, the larger the percentage of the genome devoted to gene regulation by the environment.”

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“The subject of one experiment is a rat that receives mild electric shocks (roughly equivalent to the static shock you might get from scuffing…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“No brain region is an island, and the formation of circuits connecting far-flung brain regions is crucial—how else can the frontal cortex use its…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“We process emotionally salient information more rapidly and automatically, but with less accuracy. Frontal function—working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk assessment, and…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“Most broadly, the PFC chooses between conflicting options—Coke or Pepsi; blurting out what you really think or restraining yourself; pulling the trigger or not.…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“One stretch of the gene is repeated a variable number of times, and the version with seven repeats (the “7R” form) produces a receptor…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

“some people always get more than their share of equality than others”

— Robert M. Sapolsky

It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as to who…

— Robert M. Sapolsky