“Perception creates behavior. Perception encourages behavior. And because this institution--this artifice--continues to socially reinforce patterns of perception and behavior, if this behavior is destructive, it may not be a bad idea to eliminate or curtail the institution.”

—  Derrick Jensen , book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 50

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Perception creates behavior. Perception encourages behavior. And because this institution--this artifice--continues to …" by Derrick Jensen?
Derrick Jensen photo
Derrick Jensen 31
American environmentalist 1960

Related quotes

“…the perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1980s, Evolutionary Economics, 1981, p. 104

“The last decade has seen a great deal of research on the perception of causation and the consequences of such perception. Conducted primarily within social psychology, the focus has been the perceived causes of other persons' behavior. A parallel analysis has been made of the perceived causes of one's own behavior, and the liveliest recent topic has concerned differences between other-perception and self-perception. The study of perceived causation is identified by the term "attribution theory," attribution referring to the perception inference of cause. As we will see, there is not one but many attribution "theories" and the term refers to several different kinds of problem. The common ideas are that people interpret behavior in terms of its causes and that these interpretations play an important role in determining reactions to the behavior.”

Harold Kelley (1921–2003) American psychologist & academic

Source: "Attribution theory and research." 1980, p. 458; Lead paragraph

“Institutions are human behavior, and they are, therefore, to be explained by the characteristics of that behavior.”

George C. Homans (1910–1989) American sociologist

George C. Homans (1962), "Autobiographical introduction", in: Sentiments & activities; essays in social science https://archive.org/stream/sentimentsactivi00homa#page/34/mode/2up, p. 35

John R. Commons photo

“Since institutional economics is behavioristic, and the behavior in question is none other than the behavior of individuals while participating in transactions, institutional economics must make an analysis of the economic behavior of individuals.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: "Institutional Economics," 1931, p. 654

George W. Bush photo

“In other words, words can be empty and all that does is just reinforce the bad behavior of tyrants.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2011, Speech at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation (2011)

“The role of discourse in society is active; it not only re-confirms and re-enacts existing social relationships and patterns of behavior, it also renegotiates social relationships and introduces new meanings and new behaviors.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 2

Neale Donald Walsch photo

“Belief creates behaviors.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Source: New Revelations: A Conversation With God

“Ethologists and comparative psychologists have discovered a host of refined adaptations in animal behavior during the past few decades. Food-finding, avoidance of predators, and behavioral adaptations to environmental stresses, including constructing shelters, nests, and burrows, all involve impressively versatile tactics on the animal's part, rather than rigid, stereotyped reflexes. Social behavior, especially courtship and care of developing young, call forth an efficiently tuned and controlled matrix of interactions among many different and potentially conflicting behavior patterns. Animal orientation and navigation have provided several striking examples of previously unsuspected modes of perception. Finally, the versatility of animal communication used to coordinate group activities has implications that can only be described as revolutionary. The flexibility and appropriateness of animal behavior suggest both that complex processes occur within their brains, and that these events may have much in common with our own conscious mental experiences.”

Donald Griffin (1915–2003) American zoologist

The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience https://books.google.it/books?id=2iTTlLpYaNsC&pg=PA0 (Revised and Enlarged Edition, New York: The Rockefeller University Press, 1981), chapter 1.

B.F. Skinner photo

“The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called "conditioning."”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

In operant conditioning we "strengthen" an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.
Science and Human Behavior (1953)

“People as adaptive organisms adjust their behavior and beliefs to the social context and to the reality of their own past and present behavior and situation.”

Gerald R. Salancik (1943–1996) American organizational theorist

Source: A social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design. 1978, p. 226

Related topics