Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

by Daniel Goleman

  21. Here parents must be sure not to deny or dismiss a child’s fear or distress but rather to show empathy for it—and then be sure not to become trapped themselves within the child’s bad mood but to confront the situation with a reassuring and optimistic sense that something can be done. By seizing moments of distress as an opportunity for empathy and intimacy, and for helping their child grow and learn, such parents become coaches in the art of managing life’s ups and downs: evidence suggests that such parenting changes not only how a child behaves but her brain. One sign of this biological shift is that a child’s physiology develops a greater ability to recover from the adverse arousal of stresses and strains. See Siegel, Developing Mind.

  22. On preschoolers and HPA, see M. R. Gunnar et al., “Temperament, Social Competence, and Adrenocortical Activity in Preschoolers,” Developmental Psychobiology 31 (1997), pp. 65–85.

  23. For the child, the crucial lesson boils down to how to shift from distress to calm. Lacking the ability to shift readily out of distress, children can learn faulty ways to make themselves feel at least a bit better. Some overreact, suppressing distress in a tight overcontrol. Others simply become overwhelmed by anxiety. If such defensive strategies become habitual, they may rigidify, imprinting in the brain as lifelong mental maneuvers deployed to ward off dysphoria of all kinds.

  24. On squirrel monkeys, see Karen Parker et al., “Prospective Investigation of Stress Inoculation in Young Monkeys,” Archives of General Psychiatry 61 (2004), pp. 933–41.

  PART IV

  Chapter 13. Webs of Attachment

  1. The three distinct types of love are crystal clear at the biochemical level. Appropriately, sex hormones—androgens and estrogens—largely fuel lust. Attraction, that sine qua non of romantic attachment, seems driven by a mix of high levels of dopamine and norepinephrine (which increase pleasure and relaxation) and low levels of serotonin (which adds a pleasing mood). The chemistry that makes a relationship last fuels kindness and drives caregiving, which waxes and wanes with varying levels of oxytocin and vasopressin. See Helen Fisher, Why We Love (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).

  2. John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, vol. 1, Attachment, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1982).

  3. M. K. McClintock, “A Functional Approach to the Behavioral Endocrinology of Rodents,” in D. Crews, ed., Psychobiology of Reproductive Behavior (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1987), pp. 176–203.

  4. On the woman’s gaze, see Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Uta Firth, “How Does the Brain Deal with the Social World?” NeuroReport 15 (2004), pp. 119–28. On the four faces, see Knut Kampe et al., “Reward Value of Attractiveness and Gaze,” Nature 413 (2001), p. 589.

  5. The classic study of flirting was done by Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, who used a special camera to surreptitiously capture images of romantic couples in Samoa, Brazil, Paris, and New York. See I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Human Ethology (New York: Aline de Gruyter, 1989).

  6. On the parallels between flirting in lovers and in babies, see Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  7. This consideration plays a larger role in how women weigh a potential partner than it does for men, which may be one reason men tend to fall in love more quickly than do women.

  8. On love as an addiction, see Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience.

  9. On drug addiction, see R. Z. Goldstein, “Drug Addiction and Its Underlying Neurobiological Basis: Neuroimaging Evidence for the Involvement of the Frontal Cortex,” American Journal of Psychiatry 159 (2002), pp. 1642–52. This study shows that in addition to the subcortical circuitry long known to be at play in addiction, prefrontal areas provide the overly positive appraisal of the drug and disable the neuronal arrays for inhibition of impulse.

  10. Brenda and Bob are used as an example in Eileen Kennedy-Moore and Jeanne C. Watson, Expressing Emotion: Myths, Realities and Therapeutic Strategies (New York: Guilford Press, 1999).

  11. On attachment styles, see Jude Cassidy and Phillip Shaver, eds., Handbook of Attachment Theory: Research and Clinical Applications (New York: Guilford Press, 1999).

  12. Judith Feeney, “Adult Romantic Attachment and Couple Relationships,” in ibid. Feeney notes that there are differing typologies for attachment styles, including some with four types rather than three, and that these styles are not necessarily “frozen”—that one can adopt different styles with changing relationship experiences. There are no hard-and-fast boundaries among these types; people can blend them, or manifest one with some people and another with others.

  13. On a secure partner, see Deborah Cohn et al., “Working Models of Childhood Attachments and Couple Relationships,” Journal of Family Issues 13, no. 4 (1992), pp. 432–49.

  14. On attachment style and brain mechanism, see Omri Gallath et al., “Attachment-style Differences and Ability to Suppress Negative Thoughts: Exploring the Neural Correlates,” NeuroImage (in press).

  15. The key neural circuitry for attachment styles seems to run between major high- and low-road landmarks of the social brain: the orbitofrontal area, the amygdala, the anterior temporal pole (ATP), the anterior cingulate, and the hippocampus. The amygdala activates the low road during feelings of fear, the ATP and cingulate during sadness. The high road opens when the orbitofrontal area engages, as when we try to think through our relationships and overcome any upsetting related emotions.

  16. These structures are all activated on the brain’s right side, which seems more involved in distressing emotions.

  17. This retrieval of angst was signaled by heightened activity in their hippocampus, the site that goes to work retrieving memories in general.

  18. The dorsal area of the cingulate monitors for situations that require greater control by the prefrontal cortex, such as distressing emotions. See Matthew M. Botvinick et al., “Conflict Monitoring and Anterior Cingulate Cortex: An Update,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, no. 12 (2004), pp. 539–46.

  19. On the avoidant style, see Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver, “The Attachment Behavioral System in Adulthood: Activation, Psychodynamics, and Interpersonal Processes,” in Mark P. Zanna, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 35 (San Diego: Academic Press, 2003), pp. 53–152.

  20. These brain activity patterns seem to explain discoveries made in earlier studies by Shaver’s group. For instance, when people in long-term romantic relationships vividly imagined that their partner was leaving them for someone else, those who were anxiously attached were unable to shut off their worried train of thought, while those who were secure or avoidant could readily stop these upsetting ruminations. On shutting off worry, see R. C. Fraley and P. R. Shaver, “Adult Attachment and the Suppression of Unwanted Thoughts,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73 (1997), pp. 1080–91. But while vanquishing such worries comes easily to those who are secure, suppressing distressing feelings about relationships demands constant mental effort for avoidant types. See Mario Mikulincer et al., “Attachment-Related Strategies During Thought-Suppression: Ironic Rebounds and Vulnerable Self-representations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87 (2004), pp. 940–56.

  21. On avoidant types, see Feeney, “Adult Romantic Attachment,” in Cassidy and Shaver, Handbook.

  Chapter 14. Desire: His and Hers

  1. On brain imaging while looking at a photo of the beloved, see H. A. Fisher et al., “Early Stage Intense Romantic Love Activates Cortical-basal Ganglia Reward/Motivation, Emotion, and Attention Systems,” poster presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, New Orleans, November 11, 2003.

  2. The two centers are the caudate nucleus and the septum.

  3. On casual sex, see Helen Fisher, Why We Love (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 117.

  4. On attractive traits, see David Buss, “Sex Differences in Human Mate Preference: Evolutionary Hypotheses Tested in 37 Cultures,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (1989), pp. 1–49.

  5. On the swe
at study, see Charles Wysocki, “Male Axillary Extracts Contain Pheromones that Affect Pulsatile Secretion of Luteinizing Hormone and Mood in Women Recipients,” Biology of Reproduction 68 (2003), pp. 2107–13.

  6. On the hip-to-waist-to-bust ratio, see Buss, “Sex Differences.”

  7. Devendra Singh, “Female Mate Value at a Glance: Relationship of Hip-to-Waist Ratio to Health, Fecundity, and Attractiveness,” Neuroendocrinology Letters, suppl. 4 (2002), pp. 81–91.

  8. The main areas activated during romantic love include the medial insula, the ACC, the caudate nucleus, and the putamen, all on both sides. These all light up during intense happiness. Just as important, portions of the cingulate gyrus and amygdala that activate during dysphoria were deactivated. See Andrea Bartels and Semir Zeki, “The Neural Basis of Romantic Love,” NeuroReport 17 (2000), pp. 3829–34.

  9. On sexual arousal and brain circuitry in men, see Serge Stoleru et al., “Neuroanatomical Correlates of Visually Evoked Sexual Arousal in Human Males,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 28 (1999), pp. 1–21; S. L. Rauch et al., “Neural Activation During Sexual and Competitive Arousal in Healthy Men,” Psychiatry Research 91(1999), pp. 1–10.

  10. The neural wiring for sex includes structures in the higher limbic brain like the septal area, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and preoptic areas, which connect through the anterior hypothalamus to the medial forebrain bundle of the lateral hypothalamus. See Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  11. The aggression circuitry concentrates in the temporal lobes, an area more active in males; the circuitry for tender nurturance, focused in the cingulate area, tends to be more active in women. Here, as everywhere in the brain, what happens depends on specifics: exactly how testosterone affects sexual desire in women differs with the dose; moderate levels increase libido, while very high levels suppress it. See R. C. Gur et al., “Sex Differences in Regional Cerebral Glucose Metabolism During a Resting State,” Science 267 (1995), pp. 528–31.

  12. Dopamine raises testosterone levels, and so the class of antidepressants that raise dopamine levels frequently increase libido as well. See J. P. Heaton, “Central Neuropharmacological Agents and Mechanisms in Erectile Dysfunction: The Role of Dopamine,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 24 (2000), pp. 561–69.

  13. Vasopressin can also impel aggression. Vasopressin and oxytocin act in the brains of both men and women, the one possibly energizing the more assertive side of mothering in women, and the other encouraging the gentler side of fatherhood in men.

  14. This simplified account of the neurochemistry of love draws on Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience. Panksepp notes that a far wider array of brain chemicals are at play in sexuality, most of which are as yet little understood.

  15. On afterplay, see C. S. Carter, “Oxytocin and Sexual Behavior,” Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews 16 (1992), pp. 131–44.

  16. On the young lawyer and her fiancé, see Mark Epstein, Open to Desire (New York: Gotham, 2005).

  17. Anne Rice talked about her sex fantasies in Katherine Ramsland, Roquelaure Reader: A Companion to Anne Rice’s Erotica (New York: Plume, 1996).

  18. On common fantasy themes, see Harold Leitenberg and Kris Henning, “Sex Fantasy,” Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995), pp. 469–96.

  19. Not all sex fantasies involve an elaborate scene; some are merely fleeting thoughts or images of a romantic or sexual activity. For a review of the current psychological consensus, see ibid.

  20. On fantasizing, see Sigmund Freud, “Creative Writers and Daydreaming,” in James Strachey, ed., The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9 (1908; London: Hogarth Press, 1962), p. 146.

  21. On daydreams and lovemaking, see, for example, G. D. Wilson and R. J. Lang, “Sex Differences in Sexual Fantasy Patterns,” Personality and Individual Differences 2 (1981), pp. 343–46.

  22. But if the fantasy reality becomes imposed on the other, without their consent, then the I-You evaporates into I-It sexuality: “it arouses me” rather than “you arouse me.” The etiquette for navigating this borderline between consent and imposition has apparently been well defined in the subculture of bondage and discipline, where the very nature of the operative fantasies can all too easily stray into interpersonal disaster.

  23. Michael J. Bader, The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), p. 157.

  24. On narcissists and sexual attitudes, see Brad J. Bushman et al., “Narcissism, Sexual Refusal, and Aggression: Testing a Narcissistic Reactance Model of Sexual Coercion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48 (2003), pp. 1027–40.

  25. On women forced into coercive sex, see Edward O. Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

  26. E. J. Kanin, “Date Rapists: Differential Sexual Socialization and Relative Deprivation,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 14 (1985), pp. 219–31.

  27. On coerced sex as a turn-on or a turnoff, see Bethany Lohr et al., “Sexual Arousal to Erotic and Aggressive Stimuli in Sexually Coercive and Noncoercive Men,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 106 (1997), pp. 230–42.

  28. K. E. Dean and N. M. Malamuth, “Characteristics of Men Who Aggress Sexually and of Men Who Imagine Aggressing,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72 (1997), pp. 449–55.

  29. On testosterone, see Alan Booth and James Dabbs, Jr., “Testosterone and Men’s Marriages,” Social Forces 72, no. 2 (1993), pp. 463–78.

  30. On arousal from depictions of rape, see G. Hall et al., “The Role of Sexual Arousal in Sexually Aggressive Behavior: a Meta-analysis,” Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology 61 (1993), pp. 1091–95.

  31. On convicted rapists’ lack of empathy, see D. Scully, Understanding Sexual Violence (London: HarperCollinsAcademic, 1990).

  32. On rapists and negative messages, see E. C. McDonell and R. M. McFall, “Construct Validity of Two Heterosocial Perception Skill Measures for Assessing Rape Proclivity,” Violence and Victims 6 (1991), pp. 17–30.

  33. Clinical evidence suggests that sex offenders masturbate regularly to fantasies of their preferred scenario. Some prisons for pedophiles, rapists, and exhibitionists try to lower the rate of repeat offenses after release by offering treatment programs. For many decades the treatment centered on trying to change the offender’s fantasies, through such means as pairing the sex scenario during masturbation with a nauseating odor, or using hormone-blocking medications to extinguish the troubling desire. But today those approaches alone are seen as insufficient without one that also enhances the offender’s empathy for their victims. So treatments can include having the offender meet real victims of crimes like their own to listen to the pain and suffering the victims felt. The treatments also address the perpetrator’s distorted sense of how victims see them. Exhibitionists, for instance, are confronted with the fact that women they expose themselves to typically see them as pathetic rather than as awesome. Therapy also attacks the distorted thinking that lets a perpetrator rationalize the crime as harmless. On the other hand, trying to suppress the dangerous fantasies can have a paradoxical effect: they may increase instead of decreasing, the more we try to avoid them. So in the more effective programs offenders instead learn how to prevent a relapse by spotting the early stirrings of the dangerous fantasies and by nipping in the bud the habits that in the past had led them to act out those scenarios. See Leitenberg and Henning, “Sex Fantasy.”

  34. See, for example, Neil Malamuth, “Predictors of Naturalistic Sexual Aggression,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50 (1986), pp. 953–62.

  35. On desire with empathy, see Judith Jordan, “Clarity in Connection: Empathic Knowing, Desire, and Sexuality,” in Women’s Growth in Diversity (New York: Guilford Press, 1997). On ego orgasm, see, for example, Masud Khan, “Ego-Orgasm in Bisexual Love,” International Review of Psycho-anal
ysis 1 (1974), pp. 143–49.