Born to Be Good_The Science of a Meaningful Life

by Dacher Keltner

  the mother referred to a young son as “horse mouth”: E Ochs, introduction to Language Socialization across Cultures: Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, vol. 3, ed. B. B. Schieffelin and E. Ochs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1–16.

  Exaggeration is core to understanding “playing the dozens”: R. D. Abrahams, “Playing the Dozens,” Journal of American Folklore 75 (1962): 209–20.

  “here’s your dog food”: C. A. Straehle, “‘Samuel?’ ‘Yes, dear?’ Teasing and Conversational Rapport,” Gender and Conversational Interaction: Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 210–30.

  When we tease, linguist Herb Clark observes, we frame the interaction as one that occurs in a playful, nonserious realm of social exchange: Herbert H. Clark, Using Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Clark has been exploring how language offers the capacity to represent different layers of social reality, and he suggests that in teasing we take on different identities.

  The philosopher Bertrand Russell argued: Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis (London: Allen and Unwin, 1938), 10.

  Male fig wasps: Krebs and Davies, An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology, 157.

  Given the enormous costs of negotiating rank, many species have shifted to ritualized battles: Ibid., chap. 7.

  frogs and toads use the depth of their croaks to negotiate rank: ibid.

  boys who were rising to the top of the hierarchy: R. C. Savin-Williams, “Dominance in a Human Adolescent Group,” Animal Behavior 25 (1977): 400–406.

  Our nickname paradigm: Keltner et al., “Teasing in Hierarchical and Intimate Relations.”

  The great satirist Rabelais described nicknames: F. Rabelais, Garantua and Pantagruel, trans. J. Cohen (Baltimore: Penguin/Everyman’s Library, 1955).

  Monica Moore surreptitiously observed: M. M. Moore, “Nonverbal Courtship Patterns in Women: Context and Consequences,” Ethology and Sociobiology 6 (1985): 237–47.

  partners with a richer vocabulary of teasing insults are happier: R. A. Bell, N. L. Buerkel-Rothfuss, and K. E. Gore, “‘Did You Bring the Yarmulke for the Cabbage Patch Kid?’ The Idiomatic Communication of Young Lovers,” Human Communication Research 14, no. 1 (1985): 47–67; L. A. Baxter, “An Investigation of Compliance-Gaining as Politeness,” Human Communication Research 10 (1984): 427–56; L. A. Baxter, “Forms and Functions of Intimate Play in Personal Relationships,” Human Communication Research 18 (1984): 336–63.

  couples who had been together for several years tease each other: Keltner et al., “Teasing in Hierarchical and Intimate Relations.”

  thanks to research by Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman: C. A. Anderson and B. J. Bushman, “Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature,” Psychological Science 12 (2001): 353–59.

  It emerges early: V. Reddy, “Playing with Others’ Expectations: Teasing and Mucking About in the First Year,” in Natural Theories of Mind: Evolution, Development, and Simulation of Everyday Mindreading, ed. A. Whiten (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 143–58.

  The teasing of children with obesity problems: J. K. Thompson, J. Cattarin, B. Fowler, and E. Fisher, “The Perception of Teasing Scale (POTS): A Revision and Extension of the Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale (PARTS),” Journal of Personality Assessment 65 (1995): 146–57; Thompson et al., “Development and Validation of the Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale,” Journal of Personality Assessment 56 (1991): 513–21.

  The literature on bullies bears this out: D. Olweus, Aggression in Schools: Bullies and Whipping Boys (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1978); Olweus, Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993).

  elevated love, amusement, and mirth: Keltner et al., “Teasing in Hierarchical and Intimate Relations.”

  consistent with the tendency for low power to trigger a threat system: D. Keltner, D. H. Gruenfeld, and C. Anderson, “Power, Approach, and Inhibition,” Psychological Review 110, no. 2 (2003): 265–84.

  teasing in romantic bonds defined by power asymmetries: ibid.

  they add irony and sarcasm to their social repertoire: E. Winner, The Point of Words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), Winner and S. Leekam, “Distinguishing Irony from Deception: Understanding the Speaker’s Second-Order Intention,” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 9 (1991): 257–70.

  a precipitous twofold drop in the reported incidences of bullying: P. K. Smith and P. Brain, “Bullying in Schools: Lessons from Two Decades of Research,” Aggressive Behavior 26, no. 1 (2000): 1–9.

  we created an opportunity for boys at two different developmental stages to taunt one another at a basketball camp: M. A. Logli et al., “Teasing, Taunting, and Gossip,” unpublished manuscript.

  There are still many mysteries to Asperger’s Syndrome: Marian Sigman and Lisa M. Capps, Children with Autism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); U. Frith, F. Happe, and F. Siddons, “Autism and Theory of Mind in Everyday Life,” Social Development 3, no. 2 (1994): 108–24.

  as revealed in the brilliant essay by music critic Tim Page: T. Page, “Parallel Play: A Lifetime of Restless Isolation Explained,” The New Yorker, August 20, 2007.

  And teasing: E. A. Heerey et al., “Understanding Teasing: Lessons from Children with Autism,” Journal of Child Abnormal Psychology 33 (2005): 55–68.

  TOUCH

  For the past fifteen years: mind and life dialogues, www.mindandlife.org.

  the Dalai Lama has been engaging: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “Understanding Our Fundamental Nature,” in Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists, ed. R. Davidson and A. Harrington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 66–80.

  an answer is found in the contagious goodness hypothesis: I summarize these ideas in greater detail elsewhere. D. Keltner, “The Compassionate Instinct,” Greater Good 1 (2004): 6–9. The ideas I summarize as part of the viral goodness hypothesis found inspiration in several sources. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1971); R. L. Trivers, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1984): 35–57; Frank, Passions Within Reason; Sober and Wilson, Unto Others.

  Desmond Morris’s famous phrasing: Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal (New York: Dell, 1967).

  As Nina Jablonski has argued: Jablonski, Skin, 39–42.

  several functions essential to human survival: For an outstanding summary of the function of the skin, see ibid.

  we learned to signal different objects and states with what are known as emblems: For one of the first taxonomies of expressive behavior, including gestures, see Ekman and Friesen, “The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior: Categories, Origins, Usage and Coding,” Semiotica 1 (1969): 49–98.

  The progenitor of this view: Rolls, The Brain and Emotion.

  in one study participants received a fifteen-minute Swedish massage: R. A. Turner et al., “Preliminary Research on Plasma Oxytocin in Normal Cycling Women: Investigating Emotion and Interpersonal Distress,” Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 62 (1999): 97–113.

  Other studies have found that massage: For a terrific summary of all facets of touch, see Tiffany Field, Touch (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).

  Recent studies have found that rat mothers: D. Francis and M. J. Meaney, “Maternal Care and the Development of Stress Responses,” Development 9 (1999): 128–34.

  Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in the pursuit of rewards: A. G. Phillips et al., “Neurobiological Correlates of Positive Emotional States: Dopamine, Anticipation, and Reward,” in International Review of Studies on Emotion, vol. 2, ed. K. T. Strongman (New York: John Wiley, 1992), 31–50.

  the benefits of touching are not limited to rat pups: For a
comprehensive review of the dozens of studies of touch therapies, and the benefits they bring to premature babies, people suffering from depression, and ailments during aging, see Field, Touch.

  when teachers are randomly assigned to touch some of their students and not others: D. C. Aguilera, “Relationship between Physical Contact and Verbal Interaction between Nurses and Patients, Journal of Psychiatric Nursing and Mental Health Services 5 (1967): 5–21; J. D. Fisher, M. Rytting, and R. Heslin, “Hands Touching Hands: Affective and Evaluative Effects of an Interpersonal Touch,” Sociometery 39 (1976): 416–21. For a review of the effects of touch, see M. J. Hertenstein et al., “The Communicative Functions of Touch in Humans, Nonhuman Primates, and Rats: A Review and Synthesis of the Empirical Research,” Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs 132 (2006): 5–94.

  In her excellent book: Field, Touch.

  mortality rates for infants: Ibid.

  In a more systematic comparison: R. Spitz, “Hospitalism,” Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 1 (1945): 53–74.

  Tiffany Field has found that massages given to premature babies lead, on average, to a 47 percent increase in weight gain: Field reviews several studies, including those from her lab, which replicate this important finding. Field, Touch.

  The infants who were touched during the procedure: L. Gray et al., “Skin-to-Skin Contact Is Analgesic in Healthy New-Borns,” Pediatrics 105 (2000): 14–20.

  Touch alters not only our stress-related physiology: Francis and Meaney, “Maternal Care and the Development of Stress Responses.”

  Jim Coan and Richie Davidson had participants wait for a painful burst of white noise: J. A. Coan, H. S. Schaefer, and R. J. Davidson, “Lending a Hand: Social Regulation of the Neural Response to Threat,” Psychological Science 17 (2006): 1032–39.

  Frans de Waal, who has studied the role of touch in the patterns of food exchange in chimpanzees: de Waal, Good Natured, 136–44.

  participants were asked to sign a petition in support of a particular issue of local importance: F. N. Willis and H. K. Hamm, “The Use of Interpersonal Touch in Securing Compliance,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 5, no. 1 (1980): 49–55.

  In a recent study, Robert Kurzban: Kurzban, “The Social Psychophysics of Cooperation: Nonverbal Communication in a Public Goods Game,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 25 (2001): 241–59.

  catalogued greeting rituals with surreptitious photography in remote cultures: Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Human Ethology.

  when people feel sympathy and are inclined to help others in need, they show a concerned eyebrow and pressed lip: N. Eisenberg et al., “Relation of Sympathy and Distress to Prosocial Behavior.”

  When I presented images of this display: J. Haidt and D. Keltner, “Culture and Facial Expression: Open Ended Methods Find More Faces and a Gradient of Universality,” Cognition and Emotion 13 (1999): 225–66.

  I turned to the next best studied modality of emotional communication: E. Simon-Thomas, D. Sauter, and Dacher Keltner, “Vocal Bursts Communicate Distinct Positive Emotions,” unpublished manuscript.

  “Touch is both the alpha and omega”: James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 2, 551.

  So Matt and I designed an experiment: Matthew Hertenstein et al., “Touch Communicates Distinct Emotions,” Emotion 6 (2006): 528–33.

  This led Robin Dunbar: Robin I. M. Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language (London: Faber and Faber, 1996).

  We live in a touch-deprived culture: Ashley Montagu, “Animadversions on the Development of a Theory of Touch,” in Touch in Early Development, ed. Tiffany M. Field (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995) 1–10.

  “There is a sensible way”: J. Watson, Psychological Care of Infant and Child (New York: W. W. Norton, 1928), 9–10.

  In a recent observational study: S. M. Jourard, “An Exploratory Study of Body Accessibility,” British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 5 (1966): 221–31.

  Compared to infants carried in harder: E. Anisfeld et al., “Does Infant Carrying Promote Attachment? An Experimental Study of the Increased Physical Contact on the Development of Attachment,” Child Development 61 (1990): 1617–27.

  LOVE

  so sharply summarized in: Ridley, The Red Queen, chaps. 6, 7; Cronin, The Ant and the Peacock, chaps. 7, 8.

  universality of serial monogamy: David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

  human males actively contribute to the raising of the offspring: Hrdy, Mother Nature; 205–17, Konner, The Tangled Wing, 263, 266.

  spur the scientific study of parent-child love: John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, vols. 1 and 2 (London: Hogarth Press, 1978); Bowlby, The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds (London: Tavistock, 1979); Bowlby, A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory (London: Routledge, 1988).

  she documented familial universals: Mary D. S. Ainsworth, Infancy in Uganda: Infant Care and the Growth of Love (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967).

  rhesus monkeys raised in isolation: H. F. Harlow, “Love in Infant Monkeys,” Scientific American 200 (1959): 68–74. H. F. Harlow and M. K. Harlow, “Social Deprivation in Monkeys,” Scientific American 207 (1962): 136–46.

  These early attachment experiences, dozens of human studies show, lay the foundation of the capacity to connect: Mario Mikulincer and Philip Shaver have been the leading scientists in extending Bowlby’s theorizing to adult human relationships. Mikulincer and Shaver, “The Attachment Behavioral System in Adulthood: Activation, Psychodynamics, and Interpersonal Processes,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 35, ed. Mark P. Zanna (New York: Academic Press, 2003), 53–152, and Attachment Patterns in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change (New York: Guilford Press, in press).

  People who report a sense of secure attachment perceive their partners to be a steady source of support and love: Nancy Collins was one of the first to do the difficult empirical work of applying Bowlby’s claims about attachment to the processes of intimate romantic relations. N. L. Collins, “Working Models of Attachment: Implications for Explanation, Emotion, and Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71 (1996): 810–32; Collins and B. C. Feeney, “A Safe Haven: An Attachment Theory Perspective on Support Seeking and Caregiving in Intimate Relationships,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 (2000): 1053–73.

  And as life progresses: For an excellent summary of the life-courses of people with different attachment styles, see Mikulincer and Shaver, “The Attachment Behavioral System in Adulthood.”

  A quick study of a morning in such a house: ibid.

  When Chris Fraley and Phil Shaver surreptitiously observed romantic partners as they said good-bye in airports: R. C. Fraley and Shaver, “Airport Separations: A Naturalistic Study of Adult Attachment Dynamics in Separating Couples,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (1998): 1198–1212.

  Anxiously attached individuals are more likely to interpret life events: Mikulincer and Shaver, “The Attachment Behavioral System in Adulthood.”

  And bonobos wage: de Waal, “Bonobo Sex and Society.”

  is our love of meat: Ridley, The Red Queen, 190.

  win in the game of sperm competition with other males: ibid. 213–16.

  the same was happening in human evolution: Jared Diamond, Why Is Sex Fun?, 72–93.

  pole dancers earn bigger tips: G. Miller, J. M. Tybur, and B. D. Jordan, “Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus,” Evolution and Human Behavior 27 (2007): 375–81.

  The specific language of desire: For superb descriptions of the language of flirtation, see D. B. Givens, Love Signals: How to Attract a Mate (New York: Crown, 1983); T. Perper, Sex Signals: The Biology of Love (Philadelphia: ISI Press, 1985); Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns, trans. G. Stracham (New York: Schocken, 1974), chap. 3.

  These brief signals honor time-honored principles in the game of sexual selectio
n: For an excellent account of the evolution of beauty, see Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (New York: Doubleday, 1999). For a more general treatment of how sexual selection processes have led to the evolution of a broader array of behaviors, from humor to music, that bind women and men together, see Miller, The Mating Mind.

  offset by a man of means: David Buss has done controversial and groundbreaking work on how the preferences for beauty and resources shape the mate selection preferences of men and women, respectively. Buss, The Evolution of Desire.

  This kind of behavioral synchrony creates a sense of similarity, trust, and merging of self and other: Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo, and Ronald L. Rapson, Emotional Contagion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

  courtship behaviors stimulate the biology of reproduction: Ridley, The Red Queen, 81–82.

  A metaphorical switch in the mind is turned on: These metaphors of love have been documented by George Lakoff and his colleagues in their work on metaphor. The nature of these metaphors closely tracks our experience of romantic love—the voice or rationality is diminished, we feel out of our minds. Clearly the mind is aiding in promoting the kind of devotion required of long-term intimate bonds. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things; Kövesces, Metaphor.

  And alongside desire, our research finds, they will feel a deep sense of anxiety: When we studied young couples’ playful, loving exchanges with each other, we found that they reported high levels of desire (no surprise there), but those feelings of passion closely corresponded to feelings of anxiety. G. C. Gonzaga et al., “Love and the Commitment Problem in Romantic Relations and Friendship,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001): 247–62.

  the male caricatured all too readily in scientific research: David Buss has done numerous studies that reveal that young men are all too ready to have casual sex. Buss, The Evolution of Desire. See also Bruce Ellis, “The Evolution of Sexual Attraction: Evaluative Mechanisms in Women,” in The Adapted Mind.