“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 to stay and be motivated, to remember all the good things, to get physical and yes you guessed it, to feel pleasure (Schultz, 2002).

You see, I told you it’s one of the primary causes that made you be here alive with us. It all started when your daddy got very interested in your mommy, and he was truly motivated to get to know her better. They went out for a romantic date, and after that, he just couldn’t get her out of his mind. He was so eager and full of energy, he decided to call her out again. This time he bought her a ticket to her favourite band, so they went out partying, and on that full moon night… well, without being too explicit, pleasure happened! (Nestler & Carlezon, 2006)

So, you see, it’s all about motivation, memory, getting moving and enjoying the rewards afterwards. It is like a college; it emphasizes the hard-working and creative student and then rewards him or her with a nice little thing called a diploma. Which nowadays, apart from hanging it on your room’s wall not much you can do with it, because reality storms in under the disguise of the job market and kicks your dopamine-filled fantasy out of the window and tells you that ‘Well, boy if you want to do more, you need to learn more! So go on to the next level, incoming bachelor’s degrees, specialized master’s degrees, or why not the highest prize: a PhD. But above all, we recommend you to be a lifelong learner.’ So much for the pleasure of having a college diploma, you’ve been distracted by yearning for knowledge. (Grech, 2018)

“Hey buddy, I can see that you are totally lost in this digital world. Look, I can help you to get back to reality and be more physical. Why don’t you treat yourself? Need a new hairdryer, perhaps this new voice-controlled washing machine? How about the new 8K smart TV? Well, my name is Amazon, and I am as diverse as the rainforests from the Amazon, so come and browse me!”

“Better try your luck with me my friend! My name is Netflix and I tell you I am the one for you, because what I offer is truly captivating, enchanting and engaging. I offer you an inescapable story you won’t be able to say no, what world you like to be in? Fantasy, Sci-fi, Horror, or perhaps action or comedy? Come and see!”

The World is a Story

There you go, now you see how it works? Stories and more stories. That’s how our mind works, because we are essentially story telling mammals. (Ingold, 2011) And this is really not new, think about the past for instance. One of the biggest story-telling organization is the Vatican, open the Bible and you can imagine how people lived their lives in the past. (Callaham, 2010) Not appealing? Open your county’s constitution and read about it and there you go another book explaining stories about your presupposed and beloved nation. Not convinced yet? Think about the legislative system like Human Rights or international supranational organizations like United Nations. (Schimmel, 2019) What rights does this mammal called Homo Sapiens coming from the Eastern corner of Africa have, in what imaginary place called country and under the guidance of what illusion called God?

Now, why did I say this? Because all these stories our minds create have to do with this neurotransmitter called dopamine. ‘Miss Dopamine’ wants us to imagine and create, ask your favourite artist, he or she can tell you a thing or two about how they feel during a creative process. Some of the artists sometimes ‘help’ themselves with not-so-legal things to boost their lady Dopamine in their heads. ‘Mr. Serotonin is not very happy when the Noradrenaline ‘teenagers’ are unleashed. And because high levels of dopamine equal heightened emotional states. Such a person is easier to be manipulated than you think, they are constantly looking for satisfaction and ready to hunt for the next ecstatic state. Though I guess it’s fair to say this kind of state has two sides just like the coin in your wallet, the good side is that if it’s coupled with intelligence and good intentions, it can do wonders.

Ideally, positive institutions enables positive traits, which then in turn enables positive subjective experience. Now, certainly, people can be happy without good intentions just as they can have good intentions in the absence of positive institutions. But whatever their state is and their intention, if they lack clarity, they can and will be brainwashed and manipulated by both the extravagant and sometimes absurd players of the digital world, such as the above-mentioned players (Facebook, Twitter, Netflix etc.) (Siebers et al., 2022)and the real-world players of men in black (think politicians, economists, bankers and even university professors). Distracted, preoccupied and diverted is the way these players want you to be.

Not all of them and not all the time of course. It’s all too clear to me that YouTube, Facebook, and Amazon are good things. You watch a mini-documentary about guitar playing on YouTube, then you get in touch with professional guitar players on Facebook and the next thing you know, you have bought your very first guitar on Amazon. How’s that a bad thing? It’s not. As a guitar player myself, I wish more people would be ‘distracted’ by mini-documentaries about electric guitar, you know. But, watching an ad on YouTube about a Selfie Toaster, then connecting with Selfie Toaster lovers on Facebook and then buying them on Amazon is… well forgive me if I hurt your feelings, but it’s not very good. (MARC S. REISCH, 2014)

I’m thinking if there are whistleblowers in the schools, and in the workplace then we should have whistleblowers for businesses, for politicians and of course whistleblowers for digital giants like Facebook and YouTube and yes even for the mighty Google (who said it isn’t biased?) In an upside world tricksters make judges unfair, inventors uncreative and therapists antisocial. What a world, right? And sometimes, I do feel that in our world decency and honesty is bad business, it’s almost as if those who are truth seekers are the ones who are punished.

Clarity is Good

Ok, so finally the question is how can we learn to be less distracted?

Good question!

I think knowledge and help should come from technology. How? Well, we know we have strengths and weaknesses, and within strengths we have something that Chris Peterson (Cameron, 2004) calls tonic and phasic strengths. The first ones are the ones that are on an ongoing basis, such as kindness, curiosity, zest. The second ones are the ones that are rising and falling according to the specific situations and demands, such as bravery when faced with a situation that creates fear or teamwork when faced with a problem that is common to the group. And the good thing about phasic strengths is that they can be trained, nurtured and rewarded. So, then I wonder. If we would have an application in our smartphones and laptops which is specifically designed to help with distractions or rather concentration. As an example, think of your beloved social media, so you are scrolling through it, reading everything that feeds your dopamine and then suddenly a pop-up message would come up and asking you the following questions:

• Are you sure this article/news/video/advertisement is relevant to you?
• Are you sure by reading this, it will help you to achieve your daily goals?
• Are you 100% sure that by reading/seeing/listening to this, it made you happier?

So basically, this application could screen and clock your time spent listening/watching/reading things on social media, and on the internet in general. Do you believe such an app would be annoying, every now and then popping up and questioning your time and attention on whatever you are doing? Well, think again! It’s no more annoying than those YouTube adverts popping in while you are watching a video. At least, this awareness-creating pop-ups is for good causes. Also, do you believe this app would be intrusive? Constantly checking your eye movements. Well, I say to you it would be no more intrusive than Google Chrome or Facebook, which comes with every iPhone or Android phone instantly, without asking the customer if they want them in their cell phones.

Alternatively, you can feed your distraction with something that I call ‘Love watching’… Aham, well don’t you get promiscuous here, I’m sure you are not thinking what I’m thinking! But that’s a topic for another blog.

Bibliography

Callaham, S. N. (2010). The Bible among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature? Bulletin for Biblical Research, 20(4). https://doi.org/10.2307/26424722

Cameron, K. S. (2004). Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline. Personnel, 49.

Grech, V. (2018). WASP (Write a Scientific Paper): To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. Early Human Development, 127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2018.07.010

Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. In Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203818336

MARC S. REISCH. (2014). Selfie Toaster, Camel Milk, Salmon Cannon. Chemical & Engineering News Archive, 92(36). https://doi.org/10.1021/cen-09236-newscripts

Nestler, E. J., & Carlezon, W. A. (2006). The Mesolimbic Dopamine Reward Circuit in Depression. In Biological Psychiatry(Vol. 59, Issue 12). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.09.018

Schimmel, N. (2019). Seeing the myth in human rights. International Affairs, 95(6). https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiz210

Schultz, W. (2002). Getting formal with dopamine and reward. In Neuron (Vol. 36, Issue 2). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(02)00967-4

Siebers, T., Beyens, I., Pouwels, J. L., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2022). Social Media and Distraction: An Experience Sampling Study among Adolescents. Media Psychology, 25(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2021.1959350

Read more about Roland Majla and his other articles HERE

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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 to avoid inbreeding. They are not consciously concerned with genetics, of course, but even plants evolved ways to avoid inbreeding. Most mammals must leave their birth group to get mating opportunity (either the males leave or the females leave, depending on the species). They don’t think conceptually about conception; they just do things that promote their genes because it stimulates happy chemicals. Natural selection built a brain good at rewiring itself during puberty because that promotes survival.

A young mammal suffers when it leaves home. Without the protection of a herd or pack or troop, its cortisol surges. Cortisol feels so bad that it motivates urgent action to relieve it. Joining a new group relieves cortisol, so pubescent animals strive for new bonds. That’s harder than you might expect. Animals typically exclude newcomers to reduce competition for resources. It works without conscious intent because brains that responded to outsiders with cortisol had more surviving children. Mammals evolved brains that make careful decisions about when to accept others.

Survival takes more than just gaining admission into a group because the newcomer is now at the bottom of the hierarchy. A young mammal’s reproductive success depends on raising its status. Mammals who stay home with their birth group confront social hierarchies too. Survival rates are low in the state of nature, and many individuals die without passing on their genes. Our brains are inherited from individuals who prevailed. You might dislike the idea that mammals compete for social status, but knowing the facts helps us manage those impulses instead of yielding to them.

The brain we’ve inherited has a strong sense of urgency about social acceptance and social rivalry. Such feelings in youth pave neural pathways that shape your response to the world today. Conscious memory of those those experiences is not necessary because brain chemicals build pathways without effort or intent.

It’s easy to see the high-school impulses in others, and harder to see in yourself. But you will find your early wiring if you look. Notice the patterns in your ups and downs today and look for adolescent experience that fits the pattern. You will be amazed at the match.

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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.

Neutral

The consequences of social comparison can be positive, negative, or neutral. A neutral example would be the copying of speech patterns heard in others. A positive example is education. It has become highly desired despite the fact that young people often resist the act of studying. The urge to have the education seen in others lifted literacy rates from almost zero to almost 100% in much of the world in a short span of hstory.

Negative

Negative consequences are the ones that concern us. A curious example is medical treatment. In Captain Cook’s day, sick people hired doctors to bleed them if they had enough money. Everyone wanted “access” to the bleeding services enjoyed by the rich, and struggled to scrape up the money. Today, chemotherapy for cancer presents a similar conundrum. It has proven useless for some cancers, but people want “access” to this horrible treatment anyway. The desperate urge for hope when other cures have failed is understandable, but medical choices should be objective. Objectivity is difficult with a brain that creates a halo around what others have. Our choice of information is biased, so we believe we are “evidence-based” even as we rush toward desires fuelled by social comparison

Natural Selection

The social comparison impulse is deeply rooted in the mammal brain. Animals compare themselves to others to avoid conflict with bigger critters. Their brains constantly make social comparisons to decide when to assert and when to withdraw. Natural selection built a brain that rewards you with the good feeling of serotonin when you gain the one-up position.  This is why people seek it so eagerly without conscious intent.

Blame Game

We are taught to blame social comparison on “our society,” but it’s in every society in every time period. You have more power over this impulse when you recognise it. When you blame society.  If you ignore the way your own brain is creating it, you abandon your internal power over it.

You can have more sauerkraut and less bleeding if you learn to monitor the halos you produce in your brain’s endless quest for serotonin.

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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 bad is caused by “our society.” This view was introduced by Rousseau in the 1700s, but in those days people had more direct experience with animals so they wouldn’t accept the huge misrepresentation of animal behavior coming from modern science.

Today it is not politically correct to say that dopamine motivates us to keep seeking more. We are meant to blame that on “our society.”

It is not politically correct to say that oxytocin motivates us to follow the herd. We are taught to blame that on “the system.”

It is not politically correct to say that serotonin motivates us to seek the one-up position.

No greater good is served by training people to blame their impulses on society, as much as we might wish it were so. It just undermines our efforts to manage our impulses, which leaves us feeling like powerless victims. Of course I am not suggesting that we strive for social dominance, follow the herd, or keep seeking more. I’m suggesting that we accept responsibility for our own motivations instead of blaming them on the system. We have power over our neurochemistry when we recognize that power. If we expect the system to manage our neurochemicals, we give away that power and end up frustrated. Taking responsibility feels threatening at first, but it has many dividends. For example, when you accept your own animal impulses, it’s easier to accept these impulses in others instead of getting so upset about them.

The facts about the mammal brain are not really new- the studies accumulated throughout the twentieth century. (Some references are here and here.) In the present century, attention has shifted to a few contrived studies on animal empathy. But the facts are still there for anyone to connect the dots. I tried to say “connect the dots” in Spanish, but I didn’t have a clue.

About the author: To find out more about Loretta Breuning, please click here

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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 found an extra-large way to meet your needs, you got an extra-large spurt. But food is soon metabolized and you have to keep finding more. If you wait until you’re starving to look, you might run out of energy before you find it. Dopamine makes foraging feel good so you start foraging before it’s too late.

We no longer risk starving tomorrow, but we still keep scanning the world for ways to meet our needs because dopamine makes it feel good. And because dopamine is quickly metabolized, you have to do it again and again. To complicate things further, your brain quickly habituates to old rewards and it takes new and improved to stimulate dopamine. There are no easy ways to do that, so ups and downs are inevitable. But when you have a free second between emergencies, you look at your phone.

Alas, when you check your phone with high hopes you are often disappointed. What now? Your brain scans its options and thinks of checking your phone again!!! That’s the power of neural pathways paved by past experience.

Many people blame this impulse on Facebook, Google, or “the system.” It feels good when you do that because it strengthens social bonds, which stimulates oxytocin. But the oxytocin is soon metabolized and you have to blame again to enjoy more. In the long run, this hurts more than it helps. When you blame externals, you overlook your internal power. But you have a choice. You can build your power over your dopamine habit instead of feeling like a victim. Your verbal brain can help you recognize and accept the non-verbal impulses of your inner mammal. For example, each time you check your phone, you can tell yourself what your inner mammal is thinking:

“I am looking for something new and different because that’s what my brain is designed to do. I would like the good feeling of new rewards right now. I would like to hear from someone who respects me. I wish I could control these things instead of just waiting for them to appear. I would like to have the good feeling of dopamine all the time. But dopamine evolved to reward steps that meet my survival needs, not to flow all the time for no reason. Nothing is wrong with me. My dopamine goes up and down because that helps me meet my needs.”

You can use your verbal brain to make peace with your inner mammal!

If you have gotten bad news on your phone in the past, you might have a negative association for your phone. So if you’re still checking it with positive expectations, consider yourself lucky.

About the author: Loretta Breuning, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay and the author of The Science of Positivity and Habits of a Happy Brain. She’s Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute, which offers a wide range of resources that help you build power over your mammalian brain chemistry. Check it out at InnerMammalInstitute.org

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“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 brain is designed to learn from unexpected rewards. A dopamine spike builds neural pathway that helps the brain find more of the unexpected rewards in the future.

When a monkey first receives food from human, the reward is unexpected because it came without effort. That conflicts with the monkey’s prior experience. The new experience trains the monkey to expect reward without effort. No intelligent critter is inclined to invest effort climbing trees when it has learned to get fruit the effortless way.

Once the dopamine spike builds a neural pathway, the reward is expected. Now the dopamine stops. It has done its job. To get more, the monkey will have to be hungry and forage successfully; or to get a bigger sweeter reward handed to it by humans. And soon the bigger reward will be expected and it will take even more to get the monkey excited..

It’s not surprising that our mammal brain is always on the lookout for the next big thing. This explains the curious conflict over food that you see among domesticated animals who are not actually hungry. I’ve seen this with temple deer in Kyoto, temple monkeys in Jaipur, squirrel monkeys in Bali, baboons in Cape Town, and the giraffes at my local zoo. And I was reminded of it by the blog post on Costa Rica:

The monkeys can be rather aggressive. They’ve been known to take swipes, snatch bags and even purposely pee on people standing under them. It’s also against the law, so forget the tempting photo-op and just don’t do it.

About the author: Loretta Breuning, PhD, is the author of Habits of a Happy Brain and Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay. She’s Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute, which offers a wide range of resources that help you build power over your mammalian brain chemistry. Check it out at InnerMammalInstitute.org

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The addict as trauma victim

Addicts are often told they are victims of trauma and their addiction will go way if they heal the trauma. But “healing” tends to get defined in an idealized way that does not exist. This leaves an addict focused on their past powerlessness rather than their present potential. The healing metaphor supports unrealistic expectations because physical wounds heal by resting on the couch. Psychic wounds do not. Nor does healing come from making child-like demands on the adult world as if collecting on an old debt. Recovery requires active steps that benefit from awareness of one’s strength rather than one’s woundedness.

The “specialness” of addiction

Addiction experts tends to generate data on the special challenges presented by the condition they study. Such information helps addicts feel special. We humans naturally seek that which makes us special, and build social alliances around a shared sense of grievance against those who undervalue our specialness. An addict loses this special identity and support if they end their addiction. Recovery look unappealing if it leaves a person feeling like a gazelle without a herd in a world full of predators. Positive psychology can help people meet their natural need for social significance in healthy ways instead of by identifying with the addiction.

The quest for “the right help”

Recovery used to be framed as a quest to “get help,” but many people remained addicted after tremendous amounts of help. Now recovery is framed as a quest for “the right help.” This makes it easy for addicts to see themselves as passive recipients of treatment rather than agents of their own choices. The problem is exacerbated when well-meaning professionals blame relapses on a client’s past providers. A professional naturally longs to be “the one” who succeeds where others have failed, but such thinking invites addicts to blame their outcomes on flaws in their treatment instead of tapping into their own power. Treatment professionals enjoy the activist metaphor of fighting for services and uniting in the quest for the cure, but addicts benefit more from paradigms that accent their power to take steps on their own behalf.

A positive alternative

If addiction could be solved by championing addicts as special trauma victims deprived of the right help, the problem would already be solved. Unfortunately, many kinds of help don’t help. Recovery requires active steps that build new neural pathways. A treatment is only “help” if such steps result. False help feeds the belief that treatment can fix you with no investment on your part. That belief has left frustrated addiction experts pinning their hopes on a pill.

The reader may indeed be waiting for “the pill” that cures addiction in the same passive way that a broken engine is fixed in a repair shop. Believers in this approach often pride themselves on their compassion, and condemn the morality of other approaches. The fact that one risks being morally condemned for expecting addicts to be proactive is emblematic of the negative thinking that infuses this field. There is plenty of room for a more positive approach, and positive psychology is well suited to lead it.

I present such an approach in: the blog post Your Power Over Addiction, the video You Have Power Over Your Happy Brain Chemicals, and the book Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin levels

About the author: Loretta Breuning, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay and the author of The Science of Positivity and Habits of a Happy Brain. She’s Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute, which offers a wide range of resources that help you build power over your mammalian brain chemistry. Check it out at InnerMammalInstitute.org

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Every who has ever lived has felt that way because the brain sees the world with itself at the center. We think its wrong to be self-centered, so we tend to overlook this core facet of cognition. The mammal brain evolved to meet its needs by looking for ways to stimulate happy chemicals. In the state of nature, behaviors that stimulate happy chemicals and avoid unhappy chemicals lead to reproductive success. Today we seek more happy chemicals with less reproducing, and chronocentrism helps us do it. Here’s how chronocentrism stimulates your dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin.

Chronocentrism stimulates dopamine

Dopamine is stimulated by the expectation of reward. The good feeling starts flowing as soon as you feel that you have found the pattern in your environment. Like a mouse who figures out the best path in a maze, our pattern-seeking brain rewards us with dopamine when we fit the pieces together. People have always constructed patterns to predict the future because it feels good.

Life is hard because the brain quickly habituates to old rewards, so it takes “new and improved” to stimulate your dopamine. One type of new and improved is the belief that you’re watching the turning point in history. You expect your efforts to have results, and that turns on the dopamine. You expect your contribution to survive in future generations, which satisfies the animal urge for a legacy. Even anticipating negative events triggers dopamine because avoiding harm is a huge reward to the mammal brain.

Chronocentrism stimulates oxytocin

The mammal brain releases oxytocin when it has the safety of social support. Oxytocin is soon metabolized, however, and a mammal feels unsafe until it stimulates more. Animals meet this need by making frequent signals that help them locate their group mates. In the modern world, making frequent expressions of concern for the course of history helps you stay connected to your herd. Every time you feel unsafe, you can these exchange signals and enjoy an oxytocin reward.

Chronocentrism stimulates serotonin

Research in the 1980s showed that social importance stimulates serotonin in monkeys. As much as we hate to think so, the good feeling of serotonin rewards a monkey for raising its social status. In the modern world, agonizing about the course of history raises your status. The serotonin is soon metabolized so you have to agonize about the course of history again and again to keep feeling it.

Chronocentrism relieves cortisol

Some day you will die and the world will go on without you. Humans can terrify themselves with abstract thoughts that animals don’t bother themselves with. Cortisol transforms the abstraction into a visceral sense of threat. When this awful feeling takes hold, one way to sooth yourself is to believe that you are living at the turning point in history. You may not be around for some future events, but you will be here for the important stuff.

The Greater Good

Your brain built its mental model of the world in order to meet your needs. You may think you are only interested in the greater good because that belief helps you meet your needs. It raises your status, which rewards you with serotonin. It connects you to the herd, which rewards you with oxytocin. It fits new developments into familiar patterns, which rewards you with dopamine. Invoking the greater good is an effective way to meet your needs, but your brain will keep filtering human history through the lens of what’s relevant to its own survival. And it will always feel like we’re at a turning point in history.

About the author: Loretta Breuning, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay and the author of The Science of Positivity and Habits of a Happy Brain. She’s Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute, which offers a wide range of resources that help you build power over your mammalian brain chemistry.

‘We Are The Positive Psychology People’

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A landmark serotonin study put a one-way mirror between an alpha monkey and his troop-mates. The mirror blocked the troop-mates view of the alpha, so they did not make submission gestures in response to his dominance gestures typical of the species. The alpha’s serotonin was much higher than his troop-mates at first, but it fell each day of the experiment and he ended up extremely agitated. Apparently he needed their deference to keep stimulating serotonin. He had to get respect to keep his cool.

This fits the reality of daily life in the animal world. Mammals learn in youth that they get bitten if they take food from a stronger individual. A bite triggers cortisol, which paves a neural pathway to the pain signal in similar future circumstances. Thus an animal learns to avoid conflict with bigger individuals. But it still needs to eat, so it scans for safe opportunities to do so. When it sees itself in the position of strength, serotonin is released and it asserts itself. Natural selection built a brain that continually compares itself to others and rewards you with a good feeling when you find a safe way to meet your needs. Even amoeba release serotonin when they determine that it’s safe to forge ahead to find food.

We mammals have ten times more serotonin in our stomachs than in our brains. That makes sense because social assertion is a precursor to food in the state of nature. Serotonin rewards social assertion and aids digestion, a dual function typical of neurochemicals.

Serotonin is not aggression. It’s the calm sense that it’s safe to act on your impulses. The mammal brain evolved to promote survival, and picking your battles promotes survival more than aggression. Group life requires delicate social judgments because the resources you see are seen by other members of the herd or pack or troop or tribe. Mammals evolved to navigate group life by making social comparisons and responding with positive or negative neurochemicals.

It’s easy to see the urge for social dominance in others and hard to see in yourself. That’s because you interpret the assertions of others with your verbal brain, while your own assertions come from a neurochemical system independent of your verbal brain. So you may insist that you don’t care about social dominance because you never think that in words. Of course you’re on guard for the assertions of others, which makes it easy to surge with cortisol and condemn them for ego, greed, narcissism, arrogance, over-confidence and aggression. At the same time, your own urge for the one-up feeling is dismissed as a simple survival necessity.

You might blame “our society” for this thought habit, but it makes perfect sense in the context of foraging. In the state of nature, you don’t know where your next meal is coming from. You have to keep seeking, and your brain rewards you with a good feeling when you do. Dopamine rewards you for stepping toward rewards; oxytocin rewards you for sustaining social support; and serotonin rewards you for taking the social risks essential to survival.

But each serotonin spurt is soon metabolized, so you have to do more to get more. This makes life challenging for everyone. This is why we’re always comparing ourselves to others and feeling urgently threatened by the non-dominant position. When you understand the brain we’ve inherited, you can be grateful for our success at restraining the urge for social dominance instead of condemning its existence. Each brain constantly struggles to manage the competing urges for social harmony and social dominance.

Mammals of every species seek social power with all the energy they have after meeting immediate needs. It’s equivalent to saving for a rainy day. Animals can’t put money in the bank or preserve food for the future, so they could starve tomorrow even if they have plenty today. Investing today’s extra energy in social power helps an animal’s genes survive tomorrow. Natural selection built a brain that motivates this behavior by making it feel good.

It’s not easy being mammal. When you understand your neurochemical operating system, you can make peace with the human quest to trigger serotonin without triggering conflict.

About the author: Loretta Breuning, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay and the author of The Science of Positivity and Habits of a Happy Brain. She’s Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute, which offers a wide range of resources that help you build power over your mammalian brain chemistry.

‘We Are The Positive Psychology People’

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Old research is usually taken for granted in our busy lives, and old researchers are often viewed critically. But when you see the world through the eyes of people who didn’t have today’s knowledge, you can relive the excitement of putting the pieces together.

Dr. Canon got my attention because he figured out that neurochemicals cause the physiological responses we associate with emotions. His work established the empirical link between mind and body. Even more exciting for me was his understanding that animals and humans have the same core responses. Of course he was not the first person to have these insights, but he proved them in an amazingly methodical way. It’s explained in his 1915 book “Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage,” which is available on Google Books.

His 1932 book, “The Wisdom Of The Body,” explores homeostasis in the same careful way. What better path to positive psychology that a deep awareness of our capacity to restore balance?

As a Harvard undergrad, Dr. Canon was a student of William James. One day, Canon found himself walking home from class with the master, and expressed his wish to major in Philosophy. James endearingly suggested this was a bad idea that would “fill your belly with east wind.” Fortunately for us, Canon switched to physiology.

His autobiography describes his contacts with Ivan Pavlov and the research community of his day. It’s fun to read about science politics with a century of distance. The animal studies will seem jarring to modern readers, but it’s useful to see the labor and persistence it took to produce what seems obvious to us today.

My foray into science history felt so good that I moved on to Walter Ernest Dixon. He’s the British pharmacologist who figured out that nerve endings secrete chemicals, and that drugs work by mimicking such secretions. He studied opium, cannabis, alcohol, “the innervation of the testis,” and “the action of placental extract.” A hundred years ago, he explained the mechanisms behind a drug’s selective physiochemical action.

Dixon got little recognition for this work in his lifetime. A recent Memorial Lecture about him is titled, “The Man Who Never Was.” Today, we often speak bitterly of such neglect and the injustice of it. Alas, bitterness can distract us from the positive aspect of science politics. It’s frustrating indeed, but we can remind ourselves that each brain sees the world through the lens of its own life experience. Scientists try to exchange lenses with each other, and they keep trying in the face of disappointment. Knowledge builds more slowly than we’d like, but it builds.

Walter Dixon didn’t give up when he failed to get recognition. In fact, most of today’s knowledge rests of work that didn’t get short-run rewards. (A chapter full of examples is in my new book, The Science of Positivity.) We can enjoy our work more once we accept the unpredictability of rewards, and history helps us do that.

About the Author: Loretta Breuning, PhD, is author of Habits of a Happy Brain and The Science of Positivity, and Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay. She founded the Inner Mammal Institute to help people manage the neurochemical operating system we’re inherited from our ancestors. InnerMammalInstitute.org

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