It's as if you were interested in fashion and your neighbor when you were growing up happened to be Giorgio Armani.

Radio stations have constructed a narrow door[way], and that's because they don't understand how complex and paradoxical our snap judgments are. It's hard to measure new songs.

The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section, is what the psychologist Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence." To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for for maximum effect.

our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can't look inside that room. but with experience we become expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret - and decode - what lies behind our snap judgment and first impressions.

Arousal leaves us mind-blind.

The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and have a well-developed sense of independence.

Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.