Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love (44 page)

32
. See Davidson, R. J. (and Begley, S.),
The Emotional Life of Your Brain
, Hudson Street Press (Penguin), 2012.

33
. The original article describing the experiment with negative emotions is Schwartz, G. E., Davidson, R. J., and Maer, F., ‘Right hemisphere lateralization for emotion in the human brain: Interactions with cognition’,
Science
, 190 (1975), 286–8.

34
. Davidson, R. J., and Fox, N. A. ‘Asymmetrical brain activity discriminates between positive versus negative affective stimuli in human infants’,
Science
, 218 (1982), 1235–7.

35
. Davidson, R. J., Ekman, P., Saron, C. D., Senulis, J. A., and Friesen, W. V., ‘Approach-Withdrawal and cerebral asymmetry: Emotional expression and brain physiology I’,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 58 (1990), 330–41.

36
. Ekman, P., Davidson, R. J., and Friesen, W. V., ‘The Duchenne smile: Emotional expression and brain physiology II’,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 58 (1990), 342–53.

37
. Davidson, R. J., and Fox, N. A., ‘Frontal brain asymmetry predicts infants’ response to maternal separation’,
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
, 98 (1989), 127–31.

38
. Schaffer, C. E., Davidson, R. J., and Saron, C., ‘Frontal and parietal electroencephalogram asymmetry in depressed and nondepressed subjects’,
Biological Psychiatry
, 18 (1987), 753–62.

39
. His observation of the large individual variation in hemispheric activity in response to the same stimulus made Davidson come up with the idea that people have
emotional styles
. For a complete account of the evolution of this theory and its meaning, see Davidson (and Begley),
The Emotional Life of Your Brain
.

40
. Foot, P., ‘A new definition’ (Recipes for Happiness),
British Medical Journal
, 321 (2000), 1576.

41
. For an extensive, though rather academic, explanation of Mandeville’s thinking, and especially his contribution to moral psychology and the science of human nature, see Hundert, E. J.,
The Enlightenment’s Fable: Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society
, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

42
. Indeed, it can be said that the Enlightenment was the stage for the first sexual revolution. A wonderful book documenting this is Dabhoiwala, F.,
The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution
, Penguin, 2013; for a short summary of the evolution of the concept of pleasure and hedonism in the Enlightenment, see Porter, R., ‘Happy hedonists’ (Recipes for Happiness),
British Medical Journal
, 321 (2000), 1572–5.

43
. Harker, L. A., and Keltner, D., ‘Expressions of positive emotion in women’s college yearbook pictures and their relationship to personality and life outcomes across adulthood’,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 80 (2001), 112–24.

44
. Abel, E. L., and Kruger, M. L., ‘Smile intensity in photographs predicts longevity’,
Psychological Science
, 21 (2010), 542–4.

45
. Keltner, D., and Bonanno, G. A., ‘A study of laughter and dissociation: Distinct correlates of laughter and smiling during bereavement’,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 4 (1997), 687–702.

46
. Dunbar, R. I. M., Baron, R, Frangou, A.,
et al.
, ‘Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold’,
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
, 279 (2011), 1161–7.

47
. Cohen, S., Alper, C. M., Doyle, W. J.,
et al.
, ‘Positive emotional style predicts resistance to illness after experimental exposure to rhinovirus or influenza A virus’,
Psychosomatic Medicine
, 68 (2006), 809–15.

48
. Layard, R.,
Happiness: Lessons from a New Science
, Penguin, 2005.

49
. For a comprehensive review of wealth inequalities and happiness, see ibid., chapter 4. See also Diener, E., and Biswar-Diener, R., ‘Will money increase subjective well-being?’,
Social Indicators Research
, 57 (2002), 119–69.

50
. Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., and Norton, M. I., ‘Spending money on others promotes happiness’,
Science
, 319 (2008), 1687–8.

51
. An important factor contributing to well-being is the ability to feel compassion. Though I do not report it here, scientists have begun to unravel some of the benefits of compassion for one’s well-being as well as the transformations it brings about in the brain. One strategy for achieving this ability is meditation. Richard Davidson has extensively studied the signature, as it were, that meditation leaves on the brain and has shown that not only experienced meditators such as skilled Buddhist monks, but also ordinary people who approach meditation as beginners, are able to translate their practice into greater compassion towards family, friends and strangers, as well as sustain positive emotions and well-being. For the latest research on this, see Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E.,
et al.
, ‘Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering’,
Psychological Science
, in press 2013; another good source on meditation and the brain is Davidson (and Begley),
The Emotional Life of Your Brain
, chapter 10.

52
. Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., and Layton, J. B., ‘Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review’,
PLOS Medicine
, 7, Issue 7 (2010), e1000316.

53
. For a background review of the theory of the vagus nerve, see Porges, S. W., ‘The polyvagal perspective’,
Biological Psychology
, 74 (2007), 116–43.

54
. Kok, B. E., and Fredrickson, B. L., ‘Upward spirals of the heart: Autonomic flexibility, as indexed by vagal tone, reciprocally and prospectively predicts positive emotions and social connectedness’,
Biological Psychology
, 85 (2010), 432–6.

55
. Kok, B. E., Coffey, E. A., Cohn, M. A.,
et al.
, ‘How positive emotions build physical health: Perceived positive social connections account for the upward spiral between positive emotions and vagal tone’,
Psychological Science
, in press
.

56
. Baldwin, J., Letter: ‘From a region in my mind’,
New Yorker
, 17 November 1962.

57
. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has ascribed the term ‘flow’ to the experience of losing yourself in what you do. Other psychologists, such as Martin Seligman, call this strategy ‘engagement’. See Peterson, C., Nansook, P., and Seligman, M. E. P., ‘Orientations to happiness and life satisfaction: The full life versus the empty life’,
Journal of Happiness Studies
, 6 (2005), 25–41.

Chapter 7

1
. Because of love’s complexity and various stages, not everyone agrees that it can be regarded as an emotion per se. However, love remains what most people intuitively refer to as one of the most common emotions.

2
. Tomlinson, Simon,
Daily Mail
, 11 December 2012.

3
. Citations of Plato’s works are from Reeve, C. D. C.,
Plato on Love
, Hackett Publishing Company, 2006.

4
. English translation of Jacopo’s sonnet in Stewart, D. E.,
The Arrow of Love
, Associated University Presses, 2010.

5
. Bartels, A., and Zeki, S., ‘The neural basis of romantic love’,
Neuroreport
, 11 (2000), 3829–34; Bartels, A., and Zeki, S., ‘The neural correlates of maternal and romantic love’,
Neuroimage
, 21 (2004), 1155–66.

6
. Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D. J., Strong, G., Li, H., and Brown, L. L., ‘Reward, motivation and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love’,
Journal of Neurophysiology
, 94 (2005), 327–37.

7
. The questionnaire used is the Passionate Love Scale; Hatfield, E., and Sprecher, S., ‘Measuring passionate love in an intimate relation’,
Journal of Adolescence
, 9 (1986), 383–410.

8
. It is noteworthy that, straight or gay, love is one and universal. The brain makes no distinction between heterosexual and homosexual love relationships. Indeed, the imaging studies that have identified the reward/motivational system of the brain as part of the neural components of romantic love have been replicated and have yielded the same results among homosexuals, both men and women; Zeki, S., and Romaya, J. P., ‘The brain reaction to viewing faces of opposite- and same-sex romantic partners’,
PLOS One
, 5, Issue 12 (2010), e15802.

9
. Stendhal,
On Love
(originally published 1822), Penguin, 1975, 2004.

10
. Zeki, S., ‘The neurobiology of love’,
FEBS Letters
, 581 (2007), 2575–9.

11
. Barthes, R.,
A Lover’s Discourse
, Hill and Wang, 1978, p. 133.

12
. Zeki, ‘The neurobiology of love’.

13
. Capgras, J., ‘L’illusion des “sosies” dans un délire systématisé chronique’,
Bulletin de la Société Clinique de Médecine Mentale
, 11 (1923), 6–16; Hirstein, W., and Ramachandran, V. S., ‘Capgras syndrome: A novel probe for understanding the neural representation of the identity and familiarity of persons’,
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
, 264 (1997), 437–44; Debruille, J. B., and Stip, E., ‘Capgras syndrome: Evolution of the hypothesis’,
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry
, 41 (1996), 181–7.

14
. The translation from the original clinical report in French is mine. See Capgras, J., ‘L’illusion des “sosies” dans un délire systématisé chronique’.

15
. See for instance Ramachandran, V. S.,
The Tell-Tale Brain
, William Heinemann, Random House, 2011. Oliver Sacks has also been interested in the Capgras syndrome, studying it alongside prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces: Sacks, O.,
The Mind’s Eye
, Picador, 2010. The Capgras syndrome is also the subject of novels such as
The Echo Maker
by Richard Powers and
Atmospheric Disturbances
by Rivka Galchen.

16
. With director Sommer Ulrickson, I staged a play called
Never Mind
, which was based on a text I wrote with the actors that was inspired by the Capgras syndrome. It premiered in Berlin on 25 January 2012 at the Sophiensäle: http://www.sophiensaele.com/produktionen.php?ID stueck=901

17
. An excellent source covering all aspects of love, and not only the early romantic passion, is Appignanesi, L.,
All about Love. Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion
, Virago Press, 2011.