Book Titles

Throughout human history, shared pain has been a bonding agent, fusing identities into ‘we’-based attachments.

The sheer strength of mutual suffering to produce unity and self-sacrifice can be seen in its ability to forge bonds across ethnic groups.

If co-creation causes at least a temporary merging of identities, then what applies to one partner also applies to the other, distributional logic notwithstanding.

Providing advice puts a person in a merging state of mind, which stimulates a linking of one’s own identity with another party’s.

…[it is wise to] ask for advice in face-to-face interactions with friends, colleagues, and customers. It should even prove effective in our interactions with superiors.

…traditionally opposed groups become united by a mutual enemy.

When we focus attention on something, we immediately come to see it as more significant to us.

…when we make a decision about someone or something, we don’t use all of the relevant available information. We use only a single, high representative piece of the total.

When rushed, stressed, uncertain, indifferent, distracted, or fatigued, we focus on less of the available information.

Novelty, transience, diversity, and acceleration are prime descriptors of civilized existence.