Love 2.0 (30 page)

57   
their vagus nerves began to respond more readily to the rhythms of
their breathing, emitting more of that healthy arrhythmia that is the fingerprint of high vagal tone:
Kok, et al. (in press).

57   
Having assets like these certainly makes life easier, and more satisfying:
Michael A. Cohn, Barbara L. Fredrickson, Stephanie L. Brown, et al. (2009). “Happiness unpacked: Positive emotions increase life satisfaction by building resilience.”
Emotion
9(3): 361–68.

58   
appears to usher in structural changes in brain regions that facilitate positivity resonance:
Pil Young Kim (2009). “The interplay of brain and experience in parental love.”
Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering
70 (6-B): 3810.

59   
your inflammatory response becomes more chronic, less responsive to cues that a crises situation has subsided:
Steve W. Cole (2009). “Social regulation of human gene expression.”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
18(3): 132–37.

59
   
feeling
isolated or unconnected to others does more bodily damage than
actual
isolation:
Steve W. Cole, Louise C. Hawkley, Jesusa M. Arevalo, et al. (2007). “Social regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes.”
Genomic Biology
8: R189.

60   
you orchestrate the messages that your cells hear, the messages that tell your cells whether to grow toward health or toward illness:
Of course, other forces are at work as well. You do not hold sole responsibility (or blame) for your health or illness via the emotions you experience. In other words, please do not use this science to blame those who suffer from illnesses for their own fate. For a sharp critique of how science can be misused in this manner, see Barbara Ehrenreich (2009).
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
. New York: Metropolitan Books.

60   
just beginning to chart the ways that oxytocin and other ingredients that make up love’s biochemistry trigger healthy changes in gene expression:
In ongoing research funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (R01NR012899) I’ve teamed up with Steve W. Cole, director of UCLA’s Social Genomics Core Laboratory, to examine how learning loving-kindness meditation may alter people’s patterns of gene expression. We are especially interested in changes that may occur in the cells that regulate inflammatory processes in the immune system.

61   
Your friend’s coworker’s sister’s happiness actually stands to elevate your own happiness:
Fowler and Christakis (2009).

Chapter 4

63   
You are made in the image of what you desire
: Thomas Merton (1958).
Thoughts on Solitude.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

64   
his controversial 1954 book,
The Doors of Perception
: Published in the United States by Harper and Row and in the UK by Chatto and Windus.

65   
now confirmed by brain imaging experiments:
See the elegant brain imaging experiments reported by Taylor Schmitz, Eve De Rosa, and Adam K. Anderson (2009). “Opposing influences of affective state valence on visual cortical encoding.”
Journal of Neuroscience
29(22): 7199–207. See also work by David Soto, Maria Funes, Azucena Guzman-Garcia, et al. (2009). “Pleasant music overcomes the loss of awareness in patients with visual neglect.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA)
106: 6011–16.

65   
a distinct brain area that reacts to human faces (the extrastriate fusiform face area, or FFA):
Nancy Kanwisher, Josh McDermott, and Marvin M. Chun (1997). “The fusiform face area: A module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception.
Journal of Neuroscience
17(11): 4302-11.

65   
a separate brain area that reacts to places (the parahippocampal place area, or PPA):
Russell Epstein, Alison Harris, Damian Stanley and Nancy Kanwisher (1999). “The parahippocampal place area: Recognition, navigation, or encoding?”
Neuron
23:115-25.

65   
The results were clear:
Schmitz, et al. (2009).

66   
they are temporarily able to see and act on information that simply doesn’t register for them while not listening to music:
Soto et al. (2009).

67   
to see things from their perspective:
Paul Miceli, Christian E. Waugh, Keiko Otake, Ahjalya Hejmadi, and Barbara L. Fredrickson (2012). “Positive emotions unlock other-focus.” Unpublished data. See also Christian E. Waugh and Barbara L. Fredrickson (2006). “Nice to know you: Positive emotions, self-other overlap, and complex understanding in the formation of a new relationship.”
Journal of Positive Psychology
1(2): 93–106.

67   
the doors of perception widen further, in unique ways:
In addition to the common forms of broadening shared by different positive emotions, recent research by Dr. Lisa Cavanaugh suggests that distinct positive emotions may also broaden your awareness in distinct ways. For example, whereas the positive emotion of hope stretches your consideration of time to be more future-oriented, love appears to stretch your circle of moral concern to include more distant others. Lisa A. Cavanaugh (2009). “Feeling good and doing better: How specific positive emotions influence consumer behavior
and well-being.”
Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences
70(3-A): 948.

67   
you come to view one another as part of a unified whole:
Waugh and Fredrickson (2006). See also work by John F. Dovidio, Samuel L. Gaertner, Alice M. Isen, and Robert Lowrance (1995). “Group representations and intergroup bias: Positive affect, similarity, and group size.”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
21(8): 856–65.

67   
love stretches your circle of concern to include others to a greater degree:
Cavanaugh (2009).

67   
extend your trust and compassion to them:
Jennifer R. Dunn and Maurice E. Schweitzer (2005). “Feeling and believing: The influence of emotion on trust.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
88(5): 736–48. See also classic work by the late Alice M. Isen and Paula F. Levin (1972). “Effect of feeling good on helping: Cookies and kindness.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
21(3): 384–88.

67   
“investment in the well-being of another, for his or her own sake,” as an essential, always-present fingerprint of love:
Quoted from page 621 in Hegi and Bergner (2010).

67   
attend more closely to other people’s needs and help you vigilantly take in and evaluate incoming information so that you can protect them from harm:
Vladas Griskevicius, Michelle N. Shiota, and Samantha L. Neufeld (2010). “Influence of different positive emotions on persuasion processing: A functional evolutionary approach.”
Emotion
10(2): 190–206.

67   
leaves you with more positive automatic reactions:
Cendri A. Hutcherson, Emma M. Seppala, and James J. Gross (2008). “Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness.”
Emotion
8(5): 720–24.

67   
your everyday interactions with friends and coworkers become more lighthearted and enjoyable:
Fredrickson, et al. (2008).

67   
neuroscientific studies show that positive emotions open your perceptual awareness:
Schmitz et al. (2009).

68   
they also open your torso:
Melissa M. Gross, Elizabeth A. Crane, and Barbara L. Fredrickson (in press). “Effort-shape and kinematic assessment of bodily expression of emotion during gait.”
Human Movement Science
.

68   
raising your cheeks to create (or deepen) the crow’s feet at the corners of your eyes:
Together with raised lip corners, these crow’s feet wrinkles have their own scientific label, the Duchenne smile, named in honor of the nineteenth-century scientist who first discovered the unique connection
between this type of smile and the sincere expression of good feelings. See Paul Ekman, Richard J. Davidson, and Wallace V. Friesen (1990). “The Duchenne smile: Emotional expression and brain physiology II.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
58(2): 342–53.

68   
overreliance on posed expressions and still photographs:
Such limitations may well account for early claims that only one of the five or six basic, universal emotions was positive, identified variously as enjoyment or happiness. See work by Paul Ekman (1992). “An argument for basic emotions.”
Cognition and Emotion
6(3/4): 169–200.

68   
the unique nonverbal fingerprint of love:
Gian C. Gonzaga, Dacher Keltner, Esme A. Londahl, and Michael D. Smith (2001). “Love and the commitment problem in romantic relations and friendship.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
81(2): 247–62.

69   
these four nonverbal cues—smiles, gestures, leans, and nods—both emanate from a person’s inner experiences of love and are read by others
as
love:
Gonzaga et al. (2001).

69   
how they deliver direct criticism, which (as I describe in a later section) has been found to predict the long-term stability of loving relationships:
John M. Gottman, James Coen, Sybil Carrere, and Catherine Swanson (1998). “Predicting marital happiness and stability from newlywed interactions.”
Journal of Marriage and the Family
60: 5–22.

69   
these and other ways of keeping in time together forge deep feelings of group solidarity:
William H. McNeil (1995).
Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History.
Harvard University Press. See also Barbara Ehrenreich (2006).

70   
a colleague of mine urged my husband and me to attend the opening game of the football season, because “that’s what we do here”:
Thank you, Robert Sellors!

71   
when people move together as one orchestrated unit, they later report that they experienced an embodied sense of rapport with each other:
Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk and Barbara L. Fredrickson (2011). “Strangers in sync: Achieving embodied rapport through shared movements.”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
48: 399–402.

71   
it breeds liking:
Michael J. Hove and Jane L. Risen (2009). “It’s all in the timing: Interpersonal synchrony increases affiliation.”
Social Cognition
27(6): 949–60.

71   
cooperation:
Scott S. Wiltermuth and Chip Heath (2009). “Synchrony and cooperation.”
Psychological Science
20(1): 1–5.

71   
and compassion:
Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSteno (2011). “Synchrony and the social tuning of compassion.”
Emotion
11(2): 262–66.

71   
success in joint action:
Piercarlo Valdesolo, Jennifer Ouyang, and David DeSteno (2010). “The rhythm of joint action: Synchrony promotes cooperative ability.”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
46(4): 693–95.

72   
the generation-spanning bonds you share with a parent or child were also forged through accumulated micro-moments of felt security and affection, communicated variously through synchronized gaze, touch, and vocalizations:
Ruth Feldman (2007). “Parent-infant synchrony: Biological foundations and developmental outcomes.”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
16(6): 340–45.

72   
nonverbal signs of unity forecast a shared subjective appreciation of oneness, connection, and an embodied sense of rapport:
Vacharkulksemsuk and Fredrickson (2011).

74   
couples who regularly do new and exciting (or even silly) things together have better quality marriages:
Art and Elaine’s story is a fictionalized account based on the scientific facts derived from clever experimental work conducted by two highly accomplished (and married!) psychologists named Art and Elaine, together with their collaborators. See Aron, et al. (2000).

74   
bringing your own positive emotion to your partner:
Indeed, experiencing intense emotions, whether positive or negative, triggers the urge to talk about that emotional experience with others. See work by Rimé (2009).

75   
they also further fortify the relationship, making it more intimate, committed, and passionate next season than it is today:
Shelly L. Gable, Gian C. Gonzaga, and Amy Strachman (2006). “Will you be there for me when things go right? Supportive responses to positive event disclosures.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
91(5): 904–17. See also Shelly L. Gable, Harry T. Reis, Emily A. Impett, and Evan R. Asher (2004). “What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
87(2): 228–45.

76   
it forecasts becoming even more solid and satisfied with their relationship:
Sara B. Algoe, Barbara L. Fredrickson, and Shelly Gable (2012). “More than reinforcement: Expressions of gratitude reveal how and why gratitude functions for the dyad.” Manuscript under review.

78   
good feelings nourish resilience:
Cohn, et al. (2009).

78   
They dismantle or undo the grip that negative emotions can gain on your mind and body alike:
Barbara L. Fredrickson and Robert W. Levenson (1998). “Positive emotions speed recovery from the cardiovascular sequelae of negative emotions.”
Cognition and Emotion
12(2): 191–220. See also Barbara L. Fredrickson, Roberta A. Mancuso, Christine Branigan, and Michele M. Tugade (2000). “The undoing effect of positive emotions.”
Motivation and Emotion
24(4): 237–58.