1. If a human has the ability, desire, and opportunity to do something, s/he will do it.
2. Unless trained otherwise, humans tend to feel more than they think. That is, their behavior is influenced more by emotion than by conscious thought.
3. The only thing that humans can value directly is emotion. The pleasant emotions constitute their primary values. Things that contribute to these primary values are secondary, tertiary, quaternary, etc., depending on their distance in the etiological chain from the primary values.
4. Unless taught otherwise (by self or others), humans tend to equate behavior with identity.
5. Humans tend to care about others in this order: self, immediate family members, non-immediate family members, friends, members of the same community, members of the same county, members of the same state, members of the same region, members of the same country, members of the same continent, members of the same planet.
6. When people use their minds to help decide which behavior to engage in, they consider their perceptions of the effects of that behavior, which may or may not be accurate.
7. Human behavior is subject to a relatively high degree of conditionability.
8. An individual’s belief system may be both internally consistent, and yet an inaccurate model of reality.
9. People tend to engage in behaviors that they believe will increase their happiness.
10. People occasionally have an inaccurate idea about the effect a given behavior will have on their happiness.
11. Human actions are enormously influenced by their belief systems.
12. The degree to which humans are aware of their belief systems varies widely among individuals.
13. Humans are fully capable of maintaining two contradictory ideas within their belief systems.
14. The ideas that are tied to some sort of emotional gratification are often the hardest to change. The most common response when others question these ideas is agitation and hostility.
15. Most people have relatively little tolerance for ambiguity, and would rather believe an erroneous idea than believe nothing.
16. Extreme emotional stress deteriorates human rationality.
17. Once a habit is in effect, it will remain in effect until acted upon by some internal or external force.