The Power of the Herd (34 page)

Long after Midnight Merlin gained the self-control to live with Rasa and Comet, sire three sons, meet his granddaughter, and even teach my human students
how to combine power with relaxed, yet heightened awareness, I would stand next to him, usually at sunset, sometimes watching the full moon rising over the mountains. After a few minutes of peaceful connection at a distance, he would often walk over to me, gently, respectfully asking for a scratch or even a lengthy massage, still demanding that I remain sensitive to his not nearly so sudden shifts in mood. In breathing into the first hint of tension, I would silently urge him to simply move away when he'd had enough. And once again, he'd stand nearby.

In the absolute silence of one cool desert night, I felt a vague yet unignorable sensation gathering force in the space between us, as if an idea, inspired by our association, were struggling to express itself. I took a deep breath, letting it fill my heart and filter up to my brain, where it exploded into an image that quickly dissolved into words. A still, small voice whispered in concert with a delicate evening breeze, and it was hard to tell whether this insight was coming from Merlin, me, the soft blue light surrounding us, or all three at once: “We are like moons, waxing and waning, darkening and shining through relationships with other celestial bodies that, at first glance, seem remote and self-contained. And yet, we move oceans on these planets, reflecting light we cannot hide or hoard, aiding travelers on nighttime journeys through distant lands.”

My body jolted ever so slightly in response to this unexpected poetry. Merlin shook his mane and looked right at me, his black eyes at once earthy and otherworldly.

“This,” he silently conveyed through waves of appreciation surging between us, “is the theme of a universal song.”

I
magine asking a group of financial advisers
with chronically high blood pressure to perform tricky arithmetic calculations — without their computers. Then imagine upping the ante by having these already agitated people rehearse speeches to a client whose money they've just lost.

That's what Karen Allen calls a stress test.
In the late 1990s, her intentions were neither punitive nor sadistic. The award-winning research scientist simply wanted to assess what effect a new pet might have on people who didn't already share their lives with one. So she picked a particularly tough crowd: unmarried, hypertensive stockbrokers.

As expected, the blood pressure of each participant spiked during the initial math tests. Phase two of the experiment required that
all forty-eight
of Allen's stressed-out subjects take an ACE inhibitor called lisinopril, a drug used to treat high blood pressure, which successfully brought their resting heart rate within normal range. Half of the brokers were then randomly selected to adopt a cat or dog from a local animal shelter.

Six months later, they returned for another round of cranial gymnastics, to which, this time, the researchers added the decidedly uncomfortable element of breaking “the bad news” to an imaginary client (which no doubt proved to be good practice for Wall Street's as-yet-unforeseen future). The blood pressure of all the traders rose when performing these mentally and emotionally challenging tasks. But the medication-only group experienced
double
the stress response of those lucky stockbrokers who took the same tests with their furry friends present. And these people weren't even petting their pets! The
unrestrained animals were sitting quietly nearby or wandering loose around the room.

Upon hearing the astonishing results, several subjects in the control group decided to even the score by adopting a dog or cat soon after the experiment ended, taking full advantage of the calming, supportive presence that an animal companion — and
only
an animal as it turns out — can provide.

Based at State University of New York in Buffalo, Allen had been studying the physiological responses generated by social interactions for over a decade. By the time she rounded up that group of frantic stockbrokers, she'd already conducted experiments to determine whether a trusted
human
companion might have the same effect on stress and performance. In one study, forty-five women took similar mathematical tests, first in the laboratory with an experimenter present. Then, at home two weeks later, they endured three more rounds of testing, one in the presence of a female friend, another with a beloved pet dog present, and a control session with only the experimenter present. During each round, the subjects were connected to machines measuring pulse rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance responses. The friends were instructed to be supportive in any way they preferred, but no one touched or spoke to the women at any time during the test. And although the subjects might have stroked their dogs when they first brought them into the room, the animals were allowed to roam freely. Participants did not pet their four-legged companions during the task itself, so touch was not considered a factor.

Keep in mind that the human companion was a close
friend,
not a co-worker or competitor. Even so, the stress readings were far and away the highest in the presence of those friends, noticeably less in the presence of the experimenter alone, and
significantly
lower with the test subjects' pets milling around. The average pulse rate of subjects performing the tasks with a supportive female friend in the room was close to 120 beats per minute, around 105 with the experimenter, and
less than 75 beats per minute
when a beloved dog was present. Blood pressure and skin conductance readings showed similarly dramatic differences.

As Allen and her colleagues revealed in their 1991 article published in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
that outlined the results,
“It's clear that the pet dog did not act merely
as a pleasant and familiar distraction. Given that task performance quality did not differ between subjects in the pet present and control conditions in the home or among subjects in the laboratory
setting, one can assume that subjects in the pet present condition were not particularly distracted by their pet dogs and remained engaged in the tasks.” The women, however, were less accurate when their friends were present, starting over more often and moving more quickly through the tasks, supporting previous studies showing that “the presence of others increases drive and decreases performance on relatively novel or unlearned tasks.”

In cool scientific fashion, Allen speculates in a footnote to the same article that
“the stress buffering role of pets may
, in part, explain their functional significance for humans and, hence, their historical presence in homes.” But the women themselves were more effusive. In postexperiment interviews, “several divorced women said that whereas husbands may come and go, and children may grow up and leave home, a ‘dog is forever.' We were told that pets never withhold their love, they never get angry and leave, and they never go out looking for new owners.” Somehow, this allows people who share their lives with animals to not only relax during off hours but to accurately perform irritating math problems with unusual ease — while hooked up to wires and electrodes, no less.

Through “performance anxiety” is the popular expression, there's a more revealing scientific term for the kind of stress we experience when executing a task, especially something new, in front of other people:
evaluation apprehension.
Involuntary physiological responses reveal how deeply we're affected by the subconscious assumption that every person we encounter, friend or foe, is evaluating everything we do. Even more maddening, those pesky elevations in blood pressure and pulse rate cause us to speed up and make more mistakes as a result, heightening the discomfort of learning just about anything, let alone experimenting with truly innovative ideas and behaviors, reinforcing our reluctance to try something unfamiliar — no matter how ineffective, or even destructive, old habits prove to be. The high level of evaluation apprehension we experience in the presence of other members of our own species, family included, also explains why creative geniuses tend to be reclusive, and why the most widely influential agents of social change, including the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, spent significant time alone in nature before returning to the city with messages and methods of hope, connection, and transformation. (See Guiding Principle 10,
chapter 22
, for a simple way to lessen the effects of evaluation apprehension in groups.)

The increasingly intense scrutiny that modern culture amplifies mercilessly,
especially through the media, compromises our ability to think clearly, let alone creatively. Regardless of the lip service paid to democracy, intensely competitive forms of capitalism favor the most domineering, naturally predatory leaders who
enjoy
a good fight. But that's not even the bad news: Sociopaths have an even greater advantage in our current system. Because of their compromised ability to feel fear, their lack of remorse for hurting others, stretching the truth or outright lying, and their marked gift for glib and entertaining put-downs, sociopaths are
best
suited to combating the personal effects of evaluation apprehension — while using the same phenomenon to manipulate and intimidate others. It takes an almost supernatural level of courage and self-sacrifice for a compassionate person with vision and integrity to step into the fray. As a result, we don't need complex conspiracy theories to worry about selfish, dictatorial leaders taking power. The farther away we move from the oxytocin-boosting and stress-buffering effects of nature and animals, the more easily civilization
selects
for aggression and sociopathy.

Politics is the ultimate chamber of horrors in this regard. “Evaluation apprehension” doesn't come close to characterizing the debilitating effects of all the infighting, backbiting, sarcasm, character defamation, and sheer mean-spirited vehemence our leaders endure in carrying out the simplest tasks. Yet the situation hasn't changed much in the past 250 years. The same old interpersonal dramas, knee-jerk reactions, calculated deceptions, and capricious, hypercritical judgments are just broadcast more widely and rapidly — set to music, with better visual aids.

Long after enemy forces surrendered and sailed back to England, President George Washington experienced vicious personal attacks, betrayals all the more shocking to him because they were carried out by fellow countrymen, some of whom had encouraged him to take office in the first place. The details are both fascinating and enlightening, especially concerning the creation of a two-party system that Washington abhorred. (For a succinct, engaging overview read the “First in Peace” chapter in Joseph Ellis's
His Excellency.)
One intricate example illustrates the now-classic pressures he faced.

In the mid-1790s, heated debates occurred over a treaty to continue trade with Great Britain, an important income source for American merchants and farmers alike. Some people quite simply hated their former oppressors and wanted to cut all ties. Any attempt to form a postwar relationship, they argued, was a betrayal of the Revolution itself. The French, who also had New World interests, didn't like the idea, either. Washington, however, supported negotiation, not only for economic reasons, but as a way to keep tabs on an imperialistic regime that might someday strike again. (The War of 1812 proved him
prescient on this account.) With compelling reasons, backed by Washington's unusually effective leadership presence and, let's not forget, his hard-won reputation as the war hero who refused to be king, the president's opinion carried considerable weight, and the Jay Treaty was passed. Detractors, still hoping to turn the tide, felt they had no choice but to launch a direct assault on Washington's character, which was hard to do without fudging the truth, spreading rumors, and whenever possible, gloating over any challenges the country faced rather than rallying behind the commander in chief to solve problems that might arise as a result of the admittedly imperfect trade agreement.

People who essentially liked Washington yet disagreed unsuccessfully with key policies began circulating rumors that billed him as a good-natured has-been, a naive, senile old man who was clearly out of his league. Letters by Thomas Jefferson to this effect were “leaked” to sympathetic members of the press who didn't mind going public without revealing their source, at least initially. Jefferson denied this covert betrayal for months, until one of his more offensive letters condemning Washington's leadership was actually printed in several newspapers, effectively ending all correspondence between the two former friends.

Even more aggressive personal attacks ensued, according to Ellis, in the summer of 1796:
“In response to the Jay Treaty
, the French Directory had declared commercial war on American shipping, and one of the first prizes captured was an American cruiser coincidentally named the
Mount Vernon.
Editorials in the
Aurora,
taking a line that would have been regarded as treasonable in any later international conflict, saluted the French campaign on the high seas and chortled over the capture of a ship associated with Washington's reputation.”

Benjamin Franklin Bache, publisher of the Philadelphia-based newspaper the
Aurora,
smelled blood in the water. Gaining notoriety as
the
voice for traumatized, or simply opportunistic, colonials who feared centralized power in
any
form, Bache stretched his newly guaranteed right to freedom of the press by resurrecting a malicious rumor, unabashedly and quite purposefully misleading the public. Based on some old forgeries of Washington's signature, part of a British scheme to have him removed as commander in chief during the Revolutionary War, the
Aurora
put a blatantly deceptive “spin” on the enemy's failed attempt to discredit him decades earlier. Bache somehow acquired these documents, gleefully printing “evidence” that the former general had accepted a bribe, creating the impression he'd been a British spy all along. Washington tried to laugh off this anemic ploy. After all, in his mind, he'd already been proved innocent.
“But in the supercharged atmosphere of the time
,” notes Ellis,
“all political attacks, no matter how preposterous, enjoyed some claim on credibility.” Ultimately, the president had to spend several days arranging for an official record of the British forgeries to be filed in State Department archives.