Against Fairness

by Asma, Stephen T.

  Nature has not left bonding up to chance, nor has it waited for rational deliberation or identification to evolve (i.e., many animals are great at bonding, despite an utter lack of intelligence). Instead, internal chemical changes spike during the window of opportunity in the brains and bodies of parents and offspring, cementing them together in ways that are incomparable with other relationships.

  Specific neuropeptides—oxytocin, opiates like endorphins, and prolactin—all rise profoundly in the last days of a mother’s pregnancy. Oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the “love hormone,” regulates several aspects of maternal biology (facilitating labor and breastfeeding), but also plays a crucial role in nurturing behavior—the CARE system. Simply introducing these neuropeptides in high doses into a non-pregnant female mammal will actually produce mothering behaviors. Non-pregnant female rats were given blood transfusions from females who had just given birth, and they immediately began engaging in new maternal behaviors (e.g., building nests, gathering another mother’s dispersed pups together, hovering over them to provide warmth, etc.).7

  Many mammals (and terrestrial vertebrates generally) imprint through the Jacobson’s organ (vomeronasal organ) at the roof of the mouth. Chemicals from offspring are taken up by the mother’s Jacobson’s organ (through smell or oral contact), usually during the cleaning of the just-born baby, and signals are conducted upstream to target sites in the amygdala and hypothalamus. Humans have a vestigial Jacobson’s organ, observable in our embryonic phase but largely inactive in adulthood. Different species have diverse ways of harvesting the chemical information that bonds them together, but for mammals the resulting brain chemistry of oxytocin is strikingly similar.

  Oxytocin bonding is a time-sensitive process. Sheep have a very short window for the mother to bond with offspring, only an hour or two. If a lamb is removed from its mother for two hours, the mother will not be bonded and will subsequently reject the lamb. But the astonishing thing is that after the bonding window has closed, scientists can reopen it again for a couple hours by injecting oxytocin into the mother’s brain. Once oxytocin is flooding the system again, the mother can lock on to her offspring and engage in maternal behaviors.8

  Oxytocin is more than a lever or switch for turning on motherhood. Found only in mammals, oxytocin was one of the first neuropeptides to be isolated and sequenced.9 Its presence in the breasts (letting down milk) is well known, but more recently scientists have been studying its role in the brain (it’s made in the hypothalamus, stored in the posterior pituitary, and then released into circulation). Discovery of oxytocin receptors in the brain signify that the brain is also a target organ for oxytocin. As Dr. Panksepp explains, we now know that oxytocin “reduces all forms of aggression that have been studied.” It is, among other things, a general anxiety reducer. Oxytocin calms down aggression and dramatically reduces irritability—important mood alterations for new parents who are often deprived of a good night’s sleep. Male moods are equally transformed by oxytocin, which floods the male brain after sex.10 Male mammals become more nurturing and less aggressive after sex.11

  Humans Are Wired for Favoritism

  In short, oxytocin is a hormone that helps the brain form attachments. It is crucial in early social bonding for mammals. One might object here that I’ve reduced human bonding to simple rat chemistry. It’s common for us to look down our noses at any rodent-human connection, but such condescension about our animality seems increasingly quaint in light of the deep similarities in all mammal biology.12

  Dr. Seth Pollak and other psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, discovered that oxytocin is absolutely vital in human bonding.13 Researchers wanted to know why some children fail to bond with their parents. Many kids suffer from “attachment disorders,” failing to seek comfort in others, even their own families. Using a control group of non-adopted kids, the researchers collected baseline oxytocin (and vasopressin) levels in eighteen four-year-old kids who were adopted from Russian and Romanian orphanages and had a history of neglect.

  Dr. Pollak devised a test in which oxytocin levels were checked before and after comfort/play time with parents. The children were held on the laps of their mothers and played a computer game together, engaging in intimate play, like whispering, tickling, petting, and so on. Immediately after this, the pleasurable oxytocin levels spiked in the non-adopted children, but remained the same in the adopted children. It appears that the anxiety-reducing, calming effects of oxytocin have been primed in us by our earliest nurturing experiences. If a child is neglected, in an overpopulated orphanage or in a cold family situation, they fail to form the normal attachment chemistry. We don’t entirely understand the mechanics yet, but it looks as though early experience with a loving caregiver “wires” the brain to associate a specific person or people with pleasurable, happy states. This association, which is both chemical and psychological, is the template for positive social bonding in later life.14

  In light of this study, I reflected on my own mother, who felt very little bond with her parents. Had her short time in an orphanage been instrumental in her detachment? No, the story of biological bonding is more complicated. The adopted kids in the study had global problems with attachment—they struggled to bond with anybody and everybody. My mom, like most other adopted kids, was perfectly capable (and demonstrable) in forming all kinds of family and friendship bonds. Her “favoritism abilities,” and the abilities of most adopted kids, are not compromised. Being an orphan doesn’t make you a cold, detached person. Moreover, there are obviously plenty of mundane events from personal history that drive people away from their parents or other family members.

  It turns out that, just as the case of sheep imprinting, humans have an oxytocin-based bonding window of opportunity. Further study of orphaned kids suggests that a child who is adopted young—between birth and approximately eighteen months old—will still have the open window for bonding with her eventual caregivers. Unfortunately, children who are neglected in orphanages for more than this time frame seem to arrive in their new families with the chemical bonding windows closed. It appears that these children will always have more difficulty forming strong attachments. Children’s brains are changed by the early presence of their parents and vice versa. Families literally prepare the pumps of emotional chemistry and smooth the pathway to later social connection.

  Fig. 5. Humans, like other mammals, have a biochemical bonding process that ties together our first circle of favorites, the nuclear family. This early bonding primes our brains for the attachments of subsequent social life. Drawing by Stephen Asma.

  The importance of oxytocin in emotional social bonding is further suggested by the fact that autistic individuals, who can be very detached, show only half the oxytocin levels of age-matched controls. Some psychologists are even suggesting oxytocin therapies as a way to improve the social behaviors and emotions of autistics.15

  A Healthy Addiction

  This entire account of biological favoritism is additionally strengthened by the fact that brain-based opiates are also heavily triggered by family interactions. Dr. Panksepp experimented on internal brain opiates in dogs, guinea pigs, chickens, and rats, and found them to be crucial in child-mother bonding and in general socialization.

  We all have natural pain-killing chemicals akin to heroin and morphine swimming in our brains. And we have receptors to receive these natural neurochemicals, which is why artificial narcotic versions can key their way into our moods, emotions, and our subjective consciousness. Having some level of opioid activity in our brains produces a pleasurable equanimity, even euphoric, steady state, or homeostasis.16 They make us feel happy. Affective neuroscientists, studying both animals and humans, have shown that social interaction increases opioid production in the brain. I get high with a little help from my friends.

  Low opioid levels actually goad us into seeking out other people. Separation distress in animals that are removed from their mothers or their group can be immediately
reduced by the introduction of opioids. Positive social interaction for mammals seems to derive much of its pleasure from the opioid release that accompanies it. Opioid systems go into overdrive during juvenile animal play and during social grooming in older mammals. If we don’t get good opioid levels, we seek out social interactions like a junkie looking for his next fix. We are literally addicted to other people.

  Everyone knows that being around their favorite people is pleasurable, but now we understand that our favorite people are actually triggering internal brain narcotics. Your favorite people feel good to be around—they contribute to brain homeostasis—and that is a crucial explanation of why these people have a very high preferential value.17 Most of these unconscious processes are inaccessible to our conscious minds, but they’re profoundly influential on our daily moods, values, and behaviors.

  We’ve known about the correlations of mammal behaviors for decades, but not much about the causes until now. Henry Harlow’s famous experiments with rhesus monkeys, in the early 1960s, showed us tragically how babies without comforting mothers go insane, even if their other needs are fully met. And decades of behaviorism, with primates starving themselves to death for another hit of cocaine, have shown us the obvious correlations between pleasure and behavior. But affective neuroscience actually shows us how and why these correlations are regularly observed. Brain homeostasis and the feedback of pleasure chemistry are at the root of our pursuit for social bonding.

  All this suggests something profound. Yes, we already knew that we’re biased in favor of our families—that’s not breaking news. What seems radical here is that our brains are actually biased toward our families.18 My young developing brain has neurochemical changes in the presence of my nurturing family members, changes that do not happen with associates, coworkers, and strangers.19 “Not only do we simply feel better about those we already know than we do strangers,” Dr. Panksepp says, “but even their faces, voices, and ways of being are engraving more powerful affective imprints in our memories.”20 Or as writer George Eliot puts it: What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life—to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories?21

  The parent-child bond is the first big, chemically underwritten, gravitational pull in our system of values. And the positive feelings of those bonds (the affective emotions) reach out beyond mere subjective states, eventually motivating real preferential action in the public world.22

  I want to suggest something bold and ironic here. It looks like the original source of all our pro-social behavior (no matter how wide the circle) is our very particular early attachments. This means that even the pro-social “fairness” of liberalism may be psychologically dependent on the very unfair early bonds of parents and children. If this is true, then we must be careful not to extend our liberal aspirations of disinterested fairness too far, because we might undermine the very mechanisms that give rise to them when people are mature enough to connect affect to principle. It may be that only early childhood favoritism triggers the pro-social biochemistry that we’ll need if we are to be genuinely concerned with fairness later in life.23 Too strident a cultural rejection of bias and favoritism might well be producing a whole society of attachment-disordered citizens whose nominal dedication to egalitarianism may be only skin-deep.

  Armed now with some understanding of the biochemistry of bonding, what do we make of those “favoritism cases” from Kongzi and Socrates? Is Euthyphro willing to roll over on his dad because he’s more principled or because he failed to get enough oxytocin/opioid feelings with his father? How should we conceptualize this case? One way—Euthyphro’s way—is to see failure to prosecute his father as a failure of moral piety (a view of absolute duty). From the viewpoint I’ve been sketching, however, the failure to stay loyal to his father might be a pathological failure of bonding (a glitch in the biochemistry of filial love). I will argue later that there is a notable correlation between filially detached personalities and strident egalitarianism.

  Obviously, between the motivating poles of absolute principles and biochemistry lay other motivations, like conscious psychology, social expectations, and so on. But I’m trying to isolate the genesis of certain nepotistic feelings—affects that are more unconscious than conscious. Freudian explanations of unconscious filial devotion, with unfalsifiable Oedipal machinations, have been deeply unsatisfying.24 Now it’s neuroscience’s turn. The results that are trickling in, like the ones I’ve been sketching, look more promising.

  Philosophers generally avoid such psychologizing arguments. Is it ad hominem to suggest that Euthyphro’s moral decision resulted from the possibility that he didn’t love his father? Is it unfair to suggest that his position is flawed because he himself is flawed? My argument may be ad hominem in the sense that it looks to the man’s personal biography, but I don’t think the argument is fallacious. If the real motive behind a moral action is a feeling (e.g., empathy, care, etc.) rather than a principle, then exploring the emotional makeup of the agent is absolutely essential for evaluating his particular actions. Moreover, if the law and our moral intuitions consider compromised cognitive abilities (e.g., mental retardation) relevant for questions of culpability, then we may need to start including affective deficiencies in our assessments of moral action.

  Flexible Favoritism

  Given these data, an interesting puzzle arises about kids who grow up with the ability to bond with other people, but who don’t feel bonded with their parents. The example of my mother is useful again. If parent bonding is the first template, then how does my mother, who approves of narcing on her own parents, become positively “lioness” about me or others to whom she’s bonded?

  Two scenarios suggest themselves, but these may not be exhaustive options. One, a kid may receive all the biochemical defaults set by caregiving parents—the oxytocin/opioid defaults for future friendships/romances etc.—but then subsequent events (real or even perceived injuries from the parents) lead the grown child to reject the parents.

  Frank Calabrese Jr. actually turned evidence against his own father, mob boss Frank Calabrese Sr., in 2007. The father appears to have been a loathsome character who preyed upon anyone, including his own family. Frank Jr. describes how the very first thing he felt when he entered the courtroom to testify against his father (whom he hadn’t seen in five years) was an overwhelming desire to go hug him. But this was quickly followed by all the feelings of dread, fear, and hatred that his father usually inspired. Frank Jr. explained: “I loved my father. I love him dearly to this day. But I don’t love his ways. I just didn’t understand why he didn’t have mine and my brother’s backs… . He’d never have our backs. We’d always have his back. I was willing to kill and die for this man.”25

  One wonders, in cases of bonding breakdown, if the old pleasurable chemistry rises up unconsciously in the grown child when put in proximity with the parents (and this is a scientifically testable hypothesis). Or are oxytocin levels squelched by overriding rational judgments of injustice and/or other negative affective stressors (e.g., drops in serotonin levels, spikes in testosterone, cortisol, etc.)? The periaqueductal gray of the midbrain appears to integrate the biochemistries of anger, defense, or attack. It’s possible that this rage system is triggered by memories of previous slights, insults, or abuses (perceived or real), and this strong response overrides the more original bonding system of the infant stage. With this option, the parent has successfully engendered the abilities of bonding in their child but can no longer enjoy the fruits of that ability.26

  The second possible explanation of people like my mother is that a child may have had cold or even abusive parents and failed to form any default warmth from that interaction, but someone else in close proximity (e.g., a doting aunt, uncle, sibling, etc.) may have unknowingly built the ability in the otherwise deprived infant. Many badly parented kids will attest in later life to the emotional life-preserver that one or two other relations provided them.


  The flexibility of biological bias is a crucial point. The brain is not wired in the deterministic way we once thought, where genes just build the brain mechanically and the machine expresses itself out toward the environment. Instead, plasticity or malleability is the rule for developing brains.27 Default biases get engraved into the brain, but those defaults are relative to particular environmental experiences (an adoptive parent is engraved just as deeply as a blood parent, if the nurturing happens within the child’s bonding timetable). Moreover, our unique neocortical powers (our high-level autobiographical rational minds) can direct and redirect some of these affective biases (feelings of favoritism) all through our subsequent lives. In other words, our bias defaults do not set like cement (as they probably do for some animals) but remain open to new experiences. This will prove crucial as we later consider how far nuclear bonding can be stretched to accommodate strangers.

  Kin Selection

  Darwinian natural selection edits and shapes populations by favoring or deleting individual traits, according to their adaptive utility in a specific environment. The unit or subject of the selection process is complicated. Darwin emphasized the individual organism as the unit of selection. My dog is fitter than your dog, for example, to survive on the frozen tundra, and so the hostile environment edits your dog (and subsequent gene line) out of the picture. Biologist Richard Dawkins famously argued that the gene, not the organism, is the proper unit of selection. Yes, my individual dog lives and yours dies in the above scenario, but nature is selecting against the genetic variation that produces a thin wispy coat of hair and for the genes that generate a thick woolly coat. Our dogs just happen to be carrying these respective genes. Naturalist Stephen Jay Gould, ever the pluralist, argued that natural selection operates at both levels—organisms and genes—and many points in-between.