Eysenck Quotes

What you read in the newspapers, hear on the radio and see on television, is hardly even the truth as seen by experts; it is the wishful thinking of journalists, seen through filters of prejudice and ignorance.

what is new in his theories is not true, and what is true in his theories is not new.

Hans Eysenck. “Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they are specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed, and unreasonable as everybody else,” he wrote in the 1950s. “And their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous.

Modern education does no favour to the children it is supposed to teach when it de-emphasizes facts; although facts are not the only important things in life, in science, and in the arts, they nevertheless constitute the absolutely essential substructure without which nothing worthwhile can be built.

The social problems that arise, arise from the facts, not our investigation of these facts.

Hans Eysenck once observed, introversion “concentrates the mind on the tasks in hand, and prevents the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.” In other words, if you’re in the backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, you’re more likely to have an apple fall on your head.

It would be very peculiar if a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complexities, learn quickly, and benefit from experience, did not have very important implications.

If the reader does not like some of the facts that emerge, I hope against hope that he will not blame me for their existence.

Dimensions of Personality was Eysenck’s first book, and has a dry, academic style. However, in grounding for the first time in science the concept of introversion/extraversion, it laid the foundation for 50 years’ work in the field of personality difference.

Nothing succeeds like success; children who opt out of school have had a continued record of failure, and it would be difficult to blame the children themselves for voting with their feet and playing truant as much as possible. This failure is not necessary; it is imposed on the children by inappropriate methods of teaching which do not take into account the innate patterns of abilities of these children. A return to sanity is long overdue; we must pay close attention to the genetic basis of our children`s abilities.

the American Government is in fact enforcing a system of employment on the universities under which they are required, under pain of bankruptcy, to employ members of minority groups in spite of the fact that a better qualified member of a non-minority group is applying for the job...Quotas were considered undesirable when they were used against minority groups; they do not become desirable when they are used against majority groups. Positive discrimination, so called, is still discrimination against somebody; one man`s positive discrimination is another man`s negative discrimination. Furthermore, who shall define a minority?...Why are some minorities more minor than others?

They bought research as they bough vegetables - a wonderful insight into official thinking about science.

introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck once observed, introversion “concentrates the mind on the tasks in hand, and prevents the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.” In other words, if you’re in the backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, you’re more likely to have an apple fall on your head.

se ha demostrado que las personas que más fuman tienen un apetito sexual mucho mayor que las que no fuman. Son más precoces sexualmente, sienten más necesidad de sexo, y más atracción por el sexo contrario. A los diecinueve años han tenido relaciones sexuales el 15 por 100 de las estudiantes universitarias blancas no fumadoras, y el 55 por 100 de las fumadoras. Las estadísticas para los varones son parecidas, según Eysenck. Además, los fumadores puntúan mucho más alto en lo que los psicólogos denominan índices «antisociales»: suelen tener niveles más altos de mala conducta, y ser más rebeldes e insolentes.

research psychologist named Hans Eysenck hypothesized that human beings seek “just right” levels of stimulation—not too much and not too little. Stimulation is the amount of input we have coming in from the outside world. It can take any number of forms, from noise to social life to flashing lights. Eysenck believed that extroverts prefer more stimulation than introverts do, and that this explained many of their differences: introverts enjoy shutting the doors to their offices and plunging into their work, because for them this sort of quiet intellectual activity is optimally stimulating, while extroverts function best when engaged in higher-wattage activities like organizing team-building workshops or chairing meetings.

The influence of Marx has been rather similar to that of Freud, not only because he too based his whole case on 'interpretations', and discounted direct evidence, but also because very few of the people who now claim to hold his views have ever bothered to read his original contributions or look at the criticism, however cogent, of these views. Indeed, present-day Marxists often hold views exactly opposite to those of Marx and Lenin, as in the question of the inheritance of intelligence. Both Marx and Lenin were quite explicit about their belief that 'equality', as an idea essentially to socialism, meant social equality, not biological equality, and they emphasized their belief that the latter was absolutely impossible to attain. It is quite clear from their writings that they supported the view that intelligence and other abilities had a clear genetic foundation, but some of their followers nowadays claim exactly the opposite! Much the same is true of Freud, his followers, too, have created a 'climate of opinion', which deviates markedly from what he himself would have approved. Nevertheless, there is a traceable ancestry, and Freud himself cannot be completely absolved of guilt.

Introversion concentrates the mind on the tasks in hand and prevents dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.

Michael Eysenck’s attention control theory of anxiety conceptualizes the cognitive basis of worry.87 He distinguishes two attention systems: one that is goal directed and one that is stimulus driven. His theory proposes that anxiety and worry disrupt the goal-directed system, allowing the stimulus-driven system to dominate. Worry produces thoughts that use the executive attention resources of working memory, making it less available for dealing with one’s professional, personal, and social obligations. Executive functions are also engaged by the consequent efforts to avoid thinking about threats and their consequences. One becomes more distractible because attention is being competed for by worry, and it is harder to stay on task. With working memory focused on threats, the stimulus-driven form of attention allows threatening stimuli to more easily seize attention. In addition, as noted earlier, anxious people treat nonthreatening stimuli as dangerous because their ability to discriminate between threat and safety is weakened, and they overvalue the danger of weak threats. Threats come to play a larger role in their lives than would otherwise be the case.

Eysenck proposed that neuroticism, on a continuum with emotional stability, is marked by a low tolerance for stress or aversive stimuli and that individuals with high levels of this trait are at increased risk for a diagnosis of neurosis

But there’s a less obvious yet surprisingly powerful explanation for introverts’ creative advantage—an explanation that everyone can learn from: introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck once observed, introversion “concentrates the mind on the tasks in hand, and prevents the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.” In other words, if you’re in the backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, you’re more likely to have an apple fall on your head. (Newton was one of the world’s great introverts. William Wordsworth described him as “A mind forever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought alone.”)

It’s energy. It’s enthusiasm. It’s charm. It’s likability. It’s all those things and yet something more. At one point I asked him whether he was happy, and he fairly bounced off his chair. The features of our immediate social and physical world—the streets we walk down, the people we encounter—play a huge role in shaping who we are and how we act. The quintessential hard-core smoker, according to Eysenck, is an extrovert, the kind of person who is sociable, likes parties, has many friends, needs to have people to talk to.... He craves excitement, takes chances, acts on the spur of the moment and is generally an impulsive individual.... He prefers to keep moving and doing things, tends to be aggressive and loses his temper quickly; his feelings are not kept under tight control and he is not always a reliable person. Heavy smokers have been shown to have a much greater sex drive than nonsmokers. They are more sexually precocious; they have a greater “need” for sex, and greater attraction to the opposite sex. They rank much higher on what psychologists call “anti-social” indexes: they tend to have greater levels of misconduct, and be more rebellious and defiant. They make snap judgments. They take more risks. Interestingly, smokers also seem to be more honest about themselves than nonsmokers. The problem, of course, is that the indiscriminate application of effort is something that is not always possible. There There are times when we need a convenient shortcut, a way to make a lot out of a little, and that is what Tipping Points, in the end, are all about. A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

Hans Eysenck. “Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they are specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed, and unreasonable as everybody else,” he wrote in the 1950s. “And their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous.”52 The irony is that Eysenck himself came to believe theories of the paranormal, showing the blinkered analysis of evidence he claimed to deplore.