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Robert M. Sapolsky

Robert M. Sapolsky Quotes

Neuroendocrinologist

Robert M. Sapolsky is a renowned neuroendocrinologist known for his research on stress, neurobiology, and evolutionary psychology. His work has revealed how stress affects the brain and body, and how these effects relate to human behavior and health.

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Famous Robert M. Sapolsky Quotes

“Whether one becomes irrationally risk taking (failing to shift strategy in response to a declining reward rate) or risk averse (failing to respond to the opposite), one is incorporating new information poorly. Stated most broadly, sustained stress impairs risk assessment.”

Facts Science Risk Female Stress Biology Male Sex Differences

Book:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Source: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“In the absence of stress, men tend toward more risk taking than women; thus, once again, hormones enhance a preexisting tendency.”

Facts Science Risk Female Stress Biology Male Sex Differences

Book:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Source: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“Depression’s defining symptom is anhedonia, the inability to feel, anticipate, or pursue pleasure. Chronic stress depletes the mesolimbic system of dopamine, generating anhedonia. The link between childhood adversity and adult depression involves both organizational effects on the developing mesolimbic system and elevated adult glucocorticoid levels, which can deplete dopamine.”

Grief Sadness Depression Stress Anhedonia

Book:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Source: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“... contemporary studies show that the worst stress-related health typically occurs in middle management, with its killer combo of high work demands but little autonomy -responsibility without control.”

Work Office Labor Stress Job Burnout Demands

Book:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Source: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“Stress also desynchronizes activation in different frontocortical regions, which impairs the ability to shift attention between tasks.”

Tasks Stress Burnout Corporation Cortisol

Book:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Source: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“sometimes, it can be enormously stressful to construct a world without stressors.”

Book:Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

“Our nights are filled with worries about a different class of diseases; we are now living well enough and long enough to slowly fall apart.”

Stress Stress Management Worries

Book:Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

“We all seek out stress. We hate the wrong kinds of stress but when it's the right kind, we love it - we pay good money to be stressed by a scary movie, a roller coaster ride, a challenging puzzle.”

Kind Hate Challenges Pay Stress Scary Puzzles Stressed Roller Coaster Coasters Good Money Roller Coaster Rides

Author:Robert M. Sapolsky

“The gigantic challenge is the magnitude of the individual differences in the optimal set point for "good stress." For one person, it's doing something risky with your bishop in a chess game; for someone else, it's becoming a mercenary in Yemen.”

Persons Games Individual Challenges Differences Becoming Stress Chess Bishops Magnitude Chess Game Optimal Mercenary Yemen Individual Differences

Author:Robert M. Sapolsky

“As long as experiencing your optimal level of good stress doesn't damage others, it's hard to objectively define where normal enjoyment of stimulation becomes adrenaline junkiehood.”

Long Hard Levels Normal Stress Enjoyment Damage Adrenaline Stimulation Optimal

Author:Robert M. Sapolsky

“We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.”

Wells Enough Social Sick Stress Psychological Luxury Good Life Live Well Neurologists

Book:A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

Source: A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

“Most of us don't collapse into puddles of stress-related disease.”

Disease Stress Related Collapse Puddles Stress Related

Author:Robert M. Sapolsky

“If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don't mess with you much. What that means is you've got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop. So the baboon is a wonderful model for living well enough and long enough to pay the price for all the social-stressor nonsense that they create for each other. They're just like us: They're not getting done in by predators and famines, they're getting done in by each other.”

“Digestion is quickly shut down during stress…The parasympathetic nervous system, perfect for all that calm, vegetative physiology, normally mediates the actions of digestion. Along comes stress: turn off parasympathetic, turn on the sympathetic, and forget about digestion.”

Action Turns Perfect Forget Stress Calm Nervous Turn-on Sympathetic Nervous System Turn Off Digestion Physiology

Author:Robert M. Sapolsky

“Stress is not a state of mind... it's measurable and dangerous, and humans can't seem to find their off-switch.”

Mind Humans States Seems Dangerous Stress State Of Mind

Author:Robert M. Sapolsky