Rebecca

“Our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards . . . helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and compassionate the next. —Albert Bandura20”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil

“Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.”
― Thomas Aquinas

“Headline?" he asked.
"'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said.
"'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said.
"'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Our personal identities are socially situated. We are where we live, eat, work, and make love. [...]

Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us. The expectations of others often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Without realizing it, we often behave in ways that confirm the beliefs others have about us. Those subjective beliefs create new realities for us. We often become who other people think we are, in their eyes and in our behavior.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil