“Hello there, how do you do? My name is Mr. Facebook, I’m sure you know me. Look, do you wanna check your new notifications, perhaps scroll through interesting feeds?” “Don’t listen to him! He is distracting you. Instead listen to me, my name is Instagram, and I’m here to instantly offer you the newest photos of your friends? Do you know that hot guy (or girl) you met last weekend down at the pub? So, go on then check it out.” “Mate don’t listen to them; all they do is to distract you! Instead, just come here and unwind. I’ve got loads of funny and absorbing short videos tailored just for you. My name is Tik-Tok by the way.” The More is More So yes, indeed. We have been through this a million times before, yet we still bite the bait every now and then. But why, you may ask. Why is it that they can do this so efficiently, under the wonderful disguise of ‘something new’? We like new things, don’t we? That’s where they come into the picture, because they know what’s new can’t be boring. You never saw it before, you never thought about it before and most importantly you never experienced it before. And they know this better than you, because it is all about that famous or infamous neurotransmitter called dopamine. Once, it was a fitness-enhancing hormone, it helped us to not just survive, but thrive throughout the ages, for instance, the fact that you are reading or listening to this blog is partly responsible for dopamine. Dopamine, the wonder hormone, helps you...
Everyone looks at the world through a lens built in high school. No one intends to, but neuroplasticity peaks in puberty so our core neural pathways develop at that time. Humans are not born hard-wired like smaller-brained creatures. We’re designed to wire ourselves from lived experience. Whatever triggered your brain chemicals in youth paved neural pathways that turn them on today. Early experience builds our core pathways because a young brain is full of myelin, the fatty substance that coats neurons and makes them efficient. Myelinated neurons convey electricity up to 100 times faster than undeveloped neurons. Whatever you do with your myelinated neurons feels natural and normal, from speaking your native language to getting social support in ways that worked when you were young. Myelin is abundant before age eight and during puberty. Those first seven years lay the foundation of your neural network, and in puberty you get a chance to rework it. Of course we learn throughout life, but we mostly add leaves to existing branches. The deep branches that control your neurochemicals are built from the repeated emotional experiences of your myelin years. Our adolescent pathways are obvious yet elusive. They’re obvious because they’re what you tell yourself all day every day. They’re elusive because they don’t match your conscious explanations of your impulses. You can penetrate that verbal veneer when you know how adolescence works in animals. There is no free love in the state of nature. Animals work hard for any reproductive opportunity that comes their way. They persist because their brain rewards them with happy chemicals when they succeed. Animals leave home at puberty...
We are influenced by social comparison more than we like to admit. When you see what others enjoy, you may suddenly feel that you need that to be happy. You don’t want to think this way. Like a child who urgently wants the red cupcake after another child chooses it, a neurochemical surge takes you by surprise. This demonstration effect is widely overlooked because it’s uncomfortable. Ignoring it gives it more power, alas. When you don’t know the impulse is inside you, you perceive it as an external fact. Monitoring You can learn to monitor your social comparison impulse instead. Then you can build your power to curb it when necessary, and enjoy it when it’s actually helpful. For example, Captain Cook used the power of social comparison to save lives. He wanted his sailors to eat sauerkraut to prevent scurvy, but they refused. So he put sauerkraut on his officers’ table, and invited everyone to help themselves from there. Soon, everyone wanted sauerkraut on their own table, and Cook’s voyages were the first to wipe out the horrible consequences of Vitamin C deficiency. Social Comparison Social comparison has clear biological roots. For example, “mate choice copying” is widely observed in the animal kingdom. Animals of many species are known to prefer mating partners seen with others, especially high-status others. Females have a lot at stake in their mate choices because they invest so much in each offspring. Monitoring the choices of others gives them useful information. Humans do this too. Despite our best intentions, the desirability of a potential mate is affected by who they are seen with....
I just got back from Mexico, where I presented the Spanish translation of my book Habits of a Happy Brain. Here I am on the Mexican equivalent of The Today Show, after furiously working on my Spanish for a few weeks. A few reporters showed up with dog-eared copies of my book full of underlinings and plastic tabs. I was thrilled by the chance to build a community of thought! But one comment was repeated and helped sharpen my focus. People said this was all new to them, and presumed it was because Mexico was late in receiving neuroscience. I said it’s new everywhere because it is not embraced by mainstream neuroscience. I have always been honest about the fact that I do not represent the neuroscience establishment. I am not credentialed in the field, and if I were, I would lose my credentials for what I’m saying. Most people find this hard to believe. They think I am just explaining neuroscience more clearly than the lab guys. They don’t see how scientists could object to what I’m saying because it seems obvious. But they do object. On the bright side, they do not openly criticize me because I do not openly criticize them. But I face a wall of silence. Why? Political correctness. It is not politically correct to say that our brains are wired from life experience. Why not? Don’t ask me. Ask them. Furthermore, it is not politically correct to say that our frustrations are caused by our animal impulses. We are supposed to blame our frustrations on “our society.” You can say it’s some of both, but the currently accepted view is that peace and love are the natural default state, and everything...
Imagine yourself getting great news on your phone. It stimulates your dopamine, which paves a neural pathway connecting your phone to your dopamine. The great feeling of dopamine tells your brain “this meets my needs.” Of course you don’t consciously think your phone meets your needs, but your conscious verbal thoughts do not control your dopamine. It’s controlled by the neural pathways built from past experience. Imagine you’re a monkey who found a great stash of ripe fruit in a certain tree. The excitement of dopamine would wire that tree in your brain. You would approach it with great expectations in the future. Conscious intent is not required because neurons connect when dopamine flows. Your phone is like that tree. Our neural pathways are not built from higher logic; they’re built from all the neural pathways active in the moment your neurochemicals are triggered. Your phone is often one of those pathways, so it’s easy how a reward pathway gets built. Big rewards trigger big dopamine surges, so a big pathway can result. The electricity in your brain flows effortlessly down nice big pathways so it’s easy to think of your phone when you seek rewards. Maybe you think you are too modest to seek rewards and only greedy people do that. But your brain is always seeking dopamine too, and it’s important to understand why. Our brain evolved in a world where you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from. You had to be foraging all the time. When you found a way to meet your needs, dopamine was released and it felt good. If you...
“Wild” means meeting your own needs. We don’t feed wild animals because it undermines their ability to meet their own needs. I was reminded of this by a blog warning to tourists in Costa Rica: “Don’t Feed the Monkeys. Conditioning them to expect human handouts diminishes their self-reliant survival instincts. Monkeys usually roam 17 km per day, but if they know people are going to feed them, they get lazy and don’t get the exercise they need.” The word “wild” is often used in the opposite way, of course. “Going wild” suggests a temporary break from the demands of meeting your own needs. Wild creatures are a useful reminder that meeting your own needs all the time is the natural state of affairs. Sometimes we are so eager to connect with others that we reward them in ways that undermine their survival skills. A familiar example is the parent who rewards their beloved child with the same treat whether they succeed or fail at a task. In the name of kindness, many people unwittingly reward bad behavior. You can end up “domesticating” a person in a way that turns the into a pet, unable to survive without your unnatural resources. This deprives the person of the happy brain chemicals stimulated by the act of meeting our needs. For example, a monkey’s dopamine is stimulated when it climbs a high tree for a piece of fruit. If you just hand them the fruit, no dopamine is stimulate…in the long run. In the short run, handing over the fruit spikes the monkey’s dopamine spike because it’s an unexpected reward. The mammal...
