Emotional Bias Quotes

We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational. ~ T. S. Eliot

A lack of emotional engagement in the affair affirms higher credibility. ~ Pawan Mishra

Well,' I answered, 'when a Westerner discusses, say, Hindu-ism or Buddhism, he is always conscious of the fundamental differences between these ideologies and his own. He may admire this or that of their ideas, but would naturally never consider the possibility of substituting them for his own. Because he a priori admits this impossibility, he is able to contemplate such really alien cultures with equanimity and often "with sympathetic appreciation. But when it comes to Islam - which is by no means as alien to Western values as Hindu or Buddhist philosophy this Western equanimity is almost invariably disturbed by an emotional bias. Is it perhaps, I sometimes wonder, because the values of Islam are close enough to those of the West to constitute a potential challenge to many Western concepts of spiritual and social life? ~ Muhammad Asad

We all know that any emotional bias
irrespective of truth or falsity
can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value ... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

The summary of Lambert and Lillenfelt's "Bloodstains" in Scientific American Mind in the October 12, 2007 The Informed Reader passes along many of these authors' strong opinions on complex and controversial topics without informing the readership that the authors' perspective is extreme, polarized, and vulnerable to challenge at many crucial points.
It is clear that false memories can be implanted in about 25% of subjects, when those memories concern issues in the normal and expectable range of experience. However, about 75% of subjects resist such efforts, and efforts to implant memories of abuse or offensive medical procedures are almost universally rejected. Therefore a wholesale attack against therapies that explore patients' memories is unwarranted. "Recovered Memory Therapy" is not a school of treatment. It is a slur used to mischaracterize approaches offensive to the authors' perspectives, designed to evoke an emotional bias against those to whom the slur is applied. ~ Richard P. Kluft

You'd think that it would make them all the more credible to be free of any obvious agenda or emotional bias, motivated only by objective logic. But there's something off-putting about these hyperrational types; they're immune to any appeals to common sense or humor, the for fuck's sake defense. [...] As Kim Stanley Robinson writes, "An excess of reason is in itself a form of madness". ~ Tim Kreider

Because I want to feel something other than this emotional crap ~ Melina Marchetta

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. ~ Jonathan Swift

It is the mind's job to protect and take care of you, to solve your problems and make sure you're safe. So, if you feel a surge of emotional upset, it moves into action, trying to help, looking for the source of the upset - for the problems - and generating solutions.
Under these conditions, the key to getting the mind to go on standby - to stilling the mind's compulsive thinking - lies in recognizing, accepting, and working with the emotional upset. Once you address the emotional undercurrent, once it is no longer churning inside you, the mind can switch off and quite literally leave you in peace. ~ Sharon Rose Summers

With Angela, everything about Damian died. His hopes, his dreams, his emotions. From that day on, Trey watched with regret, and a silent prayer to his sister, who he hoped looked down upon them. He wished that Damian would rediscover his humanity. He wished that she had died happy. And he hoped that one day, Damian would learn to live again. ~ Elaine White

I hope I am pigeonholed with comedy. I'm really not interested in writing the darker stuff, the emotional stuff. ~ Jane Espenson

A lot of my emotional issues come from dealing with the opposite sex. I've come to terms with the fact that I'll be retired before I can finally enter into a healthy relationship. ~ Adam Levine

Become Aware of Memory Bias

When people are anxious, they often have biased recall for events. For example, Brian talks himself into believing he screwed up an interview for a promotion because he thinks over and over about things he could've said. However, he doesn't as easily recall the good answers he gave. He endlessly mentally rehashes ambiguous cues the interviewers gave off, such as appearing to rush through questions, but doesn't as easily recall when the interviewers responded positively.
Another example: A friend of mine used to talk herself into believing she'd failed every exam she ever took. She'd ruminate over all the answers she hadn't known and wouldn't recall questions she'd been able to answer correctly. The take-home message when you're ruminating: Don't trust your memory. You might be ruminating about something fictional or at least magnified. This also applies to ruminating about how you think others perceive you; you may just be mind reading based on a biased memory of interactions.
Experiment: Do you have any current rumination topics where memory bias might be playing a role? If you can't think of anything now, come back to this experiment when you have an issue that fits. Answer the following questions:

1. What's your ruminating mind telling you?
2. What are the objective data telling you about whether your ruminative thoughts are likely to be correct? For example, my friend who always convinced herself she'd fail ~ Alice Boyes

If I am a parent, what is my relationship with my child? First of all, have I any relationship at all? The child happens to be my son or my daughter, but is there actually any relationship, any contact, companionship, communion between myself and my child, or am I too busy earning money, or whatever it is, and therefore pack him off to school? So I really have no contact or communion at all with the boy or the girl, have I? If I am a busy parent, as parents generally are, and I merely want my son to be something, a lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer, have I any relationship with him even though I have produced him?

Do parents ever ask themselves why they have children? Do they have children to perpetuate their name, to carry on their property? Do they want children merely for the sake of their own delight, to satisfy their own emotional needs? If so, then the children become a mere projection of the desires and fears of their parents. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

In Germany, no child finishes high school without learning about the Holocaust. Not just the facts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it - what it means. As a result, Germans grow up appropriately aware and apologetic. British schools treat colonialism the same way, to an extent. Their children are taught the history of the Empire with a kind of disclaimer hanging over the whole thing. "Well, that was shameful, now wasn't it?"
In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren't taught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it's taught in America. In America, the history of racism is taught like this: "There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it's done." It was the same for us. "Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let's move on." Facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension. It was as if the teachers, many of whom were white, had been given a mandate. "Whatever you do, don't make the kids angry. ~ Trevor Noah

I think that there is a bias in the current literary climate, which is not only very Western but very male. ~ Gish Jen

It is in the movements of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately. ~ Anais Nin

I have not been diagnosed with epilepsy. I did have an MRI of the brain, and they found no abnormalities in my brain. Now, there are people with epilepsy who have completely normal MRI's, too. I just think also, you know, epileptic seizures can be triggered by emotional stress, by all kinds of things, lights. ~ Siri Hustvedt

So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. ~ Alexander Hamilton

That's the thing about people who love to play devil's advocate!' I shouted. 'There's no emotional involvement in it for you, there's nothing at stake! ~ Candice Carty-Williams

What do you envision for your future, Anna?"
His abrupt question struck a nerve in me. It was the same question I'd been asking myself for months.
"I don't know," I said. "I used to know what I wanted, but not anymore."
He considered this, watching me with curiosity. "What did you want?"
I reached down and touched the water. "A family, mostly."
"And you no longer want that?"
I dried my hands on my jeans, trying not to get emotional. At one time, I wanted a loving husband and a houseful of kids more than anything in the world. But I'd let go of those dreams. I couldn't even adopt a child. What would the Dukes say if they caught me playing house?
"I can't have those things," I told him, still avoiding his stare. "And I'm tired of wanting things I can't have."
His voice was low when he responded. "Perhaps children are out of the question, but you could still have a husband, in secret."
My eyes flew up to his, and my skin sizzled as his words settled over me. I opened my mouth, but couldn't speak. His light eyes played chicken with mine, not backing down from his claim.
"It's too dangerous," I said.
"You are young." He didn't state it in a condescending way, but I still bristled. "Someday you may agree that there are dangers worth facing."
I swallowed, wishing my crazy heart would stop trying to break out of my rib cage. ~ Wendy Higgins

Working on television is therapeutic to me. When that camera comes on all negativity vanishes. I forget about the fight I had with my neighbor. I forget about the pain in my left foot. I forget about my dog dying. Performing, for me, is an emotional cure all. ~ Todd Newton

Humor is a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect.There is always a laugh in the utterly familiar. ~ Max Eastman

We could say that the health of a culture is equal to the collective ability of the people who work there to feel the impacts of their actions on others. Now if you're an app developer and want to help me build a tool that tracks that, please give a call. What I've seen over and over again in my career as a business leader and leadership mentor is that this one thing - the inability of people to feel their impact on others - is the cause of cultural dysfunction. And the higher up you are on the org chart, the more problematic that weakness is in terms of what it does to the culture at large. Which is why, as a manager, the most important thing you can do - after recognizing your own impact on your team - is to help people see their impacts on each other, and to help them let go of the emotional story they're telling themselves that's keeping the pattern going. In ~ Jonathan Raymond

Actors want to act; actors want to emote. It's like the emotional equivalent of tearing your shirt off and screaming to the heavens: you want to express, and you want to be seen to be expressing. ~ Joel Edgerton

I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love - then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate. ~ Rachel Carson

what is a psychopath? The short version." "A person who is superficially charming and well-spoken; demonstrates inflated self-esteem, arrogance, and a sense of superiority; is consistently deceitful and prone to pathological lying; is cunning and manipulative, maneuvering others for his or her own personal gain; has no remorse and feels no guilt; is callous, inconsiderate, and unconcerned by the pain and suffering of others; shows shallow affect, demonstrating a limited range and depth of emotional responses and feelings; exhibits minimal fear responses and a disinclination to change behavior in response to pain or negative social stimuli; and gets bored easily, needing constant stimulation. ~ Paul Draker

There is an emotional promiscuity we've noticed among many good young men and women. The young man understands something of the journey of the heart. He wants to talk, to "share the journey." The woman is grateful to be pursued, she opens up. They share the intimacies of their lives - their wounds, their walks with God. But he never commits. He enjoys her... then leaves. And she wonders, What did I do wrong? She failed to see his passivity. He really did not ever commit or offer assurances that he would. Like Willoughby to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility.

Be careful you do not offer too much of yourself to a man until you have good, solid evidence that he is a strong man willing to commit. Look at his track record with other women. Is there anything to be concerned about there? If so, bring it up. Also, does he have any close male friends - and what are they like as men? Can he hold down a job? Is he walking with God in a real and intimate way? Is he facing the wounds of his own life, and is he also demonstrating a desire to repent of Adam's passivity and/or violence? Is he headed somewhere with his life? A lot of questions, but your heart is a treasure, and we want you to offer it only to a man who is worthy and ready to handle it well. ~ Stasi Eldredge

Gilbert was always saying that he loved people. He needed them around him. He was always saying that he loved me, and I imagine he honestly believed this, though of course his handling of my career reflected favorably on himself. Love never did mean quite the same thing in the entertainment business as in less volatile circles. ~ John P. Marquand

When your spouse's emotional love tank is full and he feels secure in your love, the whole world looks bright and your spouse will move out to reach his highest potential in life. ~ Gary Chapman

The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own "national security" to be paramount above all other consideration.

I am all for cultural diversity and would be willing to see each recognizable group value its cultural heritage. I am a New York patriot, for instance, and if I lived in Los Angeles, I would love to get together with other New York expatriates and sing "Give My Regards to Broadway."

This sort of thing, however, should remain cultural and benign. I'm against it if it means that each group despises others and lusts to wipe them out. I'm against arming each little self-defined group with weapons with which to enforce its own prides and prejudices.

The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. there must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.

Can that be done? The question is equivalent to: Can humanity survive?

I am not a Zionist, then, because I don't believe in nations, and because Zionism merely sets up one more nation to trouble the world. It sets up one more nation to have "rights" and "dema ~ Isaac Asimov

It's a fine line between writing something with genuine emotional impact and turning into little idiots feeling sorry for ourselves and playing stadium rock. ~ Thom Yorke

We came to recognize that our initial thinking about the keys to educational reform was wrong. The key variables weren't pedagogical. They weren't financial. They weren't curricular. They weren't research. They weren't any of the usual things we've always talked about as the engines of change. The variables were deeply emotional and cultural. ~ David Edward

Poetry examines an emotional truth. It's an experience filtered through the personality of the poet. We look to poetry for visions, not scientific truths. The poet's job is to combine new elements. Explore their melting, seeping into one another. ~ Diane Glancy

I mean, it's just sex. It's simple biology, right? You build up tension and stress
you need to open a valve somewhere and let it out, or you'll explode. Nothing deep and emotional about it, just a bodily function. Like sneezing.'
'Sure,' Kane said, nodding sagely. 'Coed naked sneezing. The next wave in porn. ~ Louisa Edwards

Forcing your love on someone who doesn't love you is an emotional rape, because your victim's heart was not aroused, you jumped into it without foreplay. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

If someone is inconsiderate or rude to you, risk telling them how it made you feel or that you didn't appreciate being treated that way. If you tend to talk yourself out of anger by telling yourself that you don't want to make waves, try telling yourself instead that it is okay to make waves sometimes and risk letting people know how you really feel. ~ Beverly Engel

People are always clinging to what they want to hear, discarding the evidence that doesn't fit with their beliefs, giving greater weight to evidence that does. ~ Paula Stokes

Patch traced a finger along my collarbone, then headed south, stopping at my heart. I felt it pounding through my skin. "Because I feel it here, in my heart," he said quietly. "I haven't lost the ability to feel emotion." He watched me closely. "Let me put it this way. Our emotional connection isn't lacking. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

On top of dealing with the emotional trauma associated with conscious and unconscious recalling, you must deal with the possibility of no one believing you or making you doubt your experiences. When women speak out about their abusers, they have to deal with the police and society not believing them ~ Malebo Sephodi

Sophisticated meditative disciplines, healing practices, cognitive and emotional trainings, conflict resolution techniques - he used them all to awaken his visitors to their own qualities of integrity, equanimity, gratitude, and forgiveness. ~ Jack Kornfield

If you are working on a short story for a small online press, don't try to write a serious, world-changing, add-this-to-the-literary-canon masterpiece. Do your best work, but keep it all in perspective. Save the stress for when it is really called for, like facing a two-week deadline to rewrite a novel for a major house. ~ Victoria Lynn Schmidt

a world where chocolate is entirely rare - or entirely mediocre - is a dystopia the likes of which we can scarcely conceive ["An Emotional History Of Chocolate," The Millions, January 5, 2015]. ~ Elizabeth Winkler

If people are paying money to see me, then I want them to walk away from the show knowing they had a really great time. I want it to be very energetic and to have fun, sad, emotional and uplifting moments. I want it to have everything! ~ Olly Murs

It's a TV show. Only the emotional damage is real. ~ Steven Moffat

The dissatisfaction of the masses is not based on economic deprivation but on a sense of ineffectually. Not an increased standard of living, but more social power, is their fundamental goal, because of their emotional orientation, they arise and act when a powerful leader-figure can coordinate them into a functioning unit rather than a chaotic mass of unformed elements. Dill ~ Philip K. Dick