The Hacking of the American Mind

by Robert H. Lustig

  Health care is just the tip of the iceberg. The economic and social devolution of the last forty years is unsustainable and is catching up to us now. Why is this happening? What are we doing wrong? The short answer is that America has lost its way. The problem runs deep, like a sewer, and it stinks. The cause and cure of what ails us lies not in the art of medicine or the politics of health care but rather in the science of happiness. And our wanton desire—for anything and everything—has betrayed us.

  The death spiral derives its strength from our collective unhappiness, which fuels its centrifugal force. But you can swim yourself to safety. Part V will show you show.

  PART V

  Out of Our Minds—In Search of the Four Cs

  16.

  Connect (Religion, Social Support, Conversation)

  Philosopher Eric Hoffer was quoted: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.” I couldn’t agree more—the destination is not the journey. Pixar chief John Lasseter said, “The journey is the reward.” The problem is, if you keep making a series of wrong turns, you could end up horrendously lost. Yikes. Is it any wonder that happiness seems so elusive?

  First you have to recognize what happiness really is. In the first fifteen chapters of this book, I hope I have made a cogent case that: (1) reward is not contentment, and pleasure is not happiness; (2) reward is dopamine, and contentment is serotonin; (3) chronic excess reward interferes with contentment; (4) business has conflated pleasure with happiness consciously and with clear-cut intent, specifically to get you to buy its junk or engage in hedonic behaviors favorable to industry; (5) government has passed legislation to make it easier to buy that junk or make easier access to engage in those behaviors to drive profit and GDP, and the Supreme Court has justified and supported these practices; and (6) buying that junk or engaging in those behaviors long-term and without thought can leave you and society fat, sick, stupid, broke, addicted, depressed, and most decidedly unhappy.

  Consumption is related to the health of an economy, but clearly not the index of health of a society. It’s pie-in-the-sky to think that the U.S. political system (or any other, save for Bhutan’s) is going to decide that individual or collective happiness outstrips GDP as the prime indicator of progress. Business certainly contributes to the pleasure side of GDP, and government has codified it. Except that pursuit of GDP loses more money for society than it makes for individuals, and so the death spiral continues. The only way to slow or stop the vortex is to increase individual contentment and, as a result, societal happiness. But for happiness, we’re on our own to pursue it—or not. And therein lies the rub: you have to pursue it. How? Where to turn?

  The next four chapters will provide the GPS for happiness, based firmly in science, so you can’t get lost. While none of these modalities will in and of themselves fix the systemic problems of our corporate consumption society, they do have the power to help you ramp up your serotonin, tamp down your dopamine and cortisol, and reclaim your happiness and, in turn, your life. Here now, I delineate the Four Cs of Contentment: Connect, Contribute, Cope, and Cook. The rationale for each is bolstered by their documented neuroscientific effects on our three limbic system pathways—the reward pathway, the contentment pathway, and the stress-fear-memory pathway (see Chapter 2). When used properly, each has been proven to be clinically effective on its own and even more so together. You can perform any or all of these—without a prescription, without a personal trainer, without cost, and at home.1 But there are two caveats to their efficacy:

  None of these four modalities is passive: you have to perform them for any to work. The pursuit of happiness is active. As you will see, in some cases pursuit means actively doing nothing.

  Each one of these Cs has been co-opted by various industry actors in an attempt to subvert your efforts. They want you to believe that they’ve cornered the market on happiness and that you’ll want what they’re selling. In fact, the happiness industry has been born out of the anxiety fomented by our current stress-happy environment. In the case of medicine, the wellness industry was born out of the fact that pharmaceuticals can treat but not prevent disease. Therefore it is incumbent on me as we progress through these next four chapters that I point out these wrong turns down the road to happiness so you don’t become completely discombobulated.

  Perception Is Truth

  Recall the hallucinogen studies from Chapter 8; the psychedelic experience is mediated by the serotonin-2a receptor, but the feelings of contentment appear to be due to cross-reactivity of certain hallucinogens, such as LSD, with the -1a receptor. The genetic studies, depression studies, and pharmacology studies (see Chapter 7) all say the same thing: for contentment, or serenity, or eudemonia, or subjective well-being—whatever you want to call it—serotonin has to bind to its -1a receptor. Clearly, complex mood disorders are influenced by serotonin levels, with the -1a receptor playing a major role. One group of investigators evaluated serotonin-1a receptor density across monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins, and determined that serotonin effects are not determined by genes alone; they can be responsive to the environment.2 That means you have at least some nominal control over your perception of contentment. For those of you with pets, no doubt you’ll appreciate this metaphor. If you want a happy house, first make sure your cat Serotonin is purring. And then, while you’re at it, keep that darn yappy dog Dopamine from constant overstimulation, or else he’s going to pee on the rug, ruin your party, smell for a while, and possibly discolor your interior permanently.

  An Act of Faith

  The hallucinogen studies provide one window on how to get there: both the mystical experience and contentment are dependent on different signaling pathways of the serotonin molecule. Well, what can offer up mystical experiences without drugs? One place is religion. Interestingly, Karl Marx called religion “the opiate of the people,” placing it squarely in the reward/pleasure pathway. But at its best, religion impacts your serotonin and can bring contentment. As you’ll learn in this section, when it activates dopamine, not so much . . .

  People turn to religion as a gateway to happiness for at least sixteen different reasons, including acceptance, power, curiosity, order, idealism, and the concept of “self-transcendence,” or belonging to something bigger than yourself.3 It is no surprise that many religions have attempted to harness that social connection to benefit the greater good, another potential pathway to contentment (see Chapter 17). The concepts of the Jewish tikkun olam (healing the world) and Christianity’s “faith without good deeds is dead” (James 2:14–26) promote collective well-being with “trickle-down” personal well-being (the opposite of “trickle-down economics”). It is in the giving to one’s children, one’s family, and to others that happiness can be realized. Eastern religions such as Buddhism and the Baha’i faith similarly endorse the concept that the true path to happiness is determined by what you do for others. Without doubt, one major appeal of organized religion is its basis in community, sharing a collective belief/purpose with like-minded people, attending services, and/or simply knowing that a group supports you. Another potential reason for religion’s appeal, as Freud postulated, is to ward off anxiety about death by affirming an afterlife. Reducing anxiety (stress and cortisol) may increase serotonin-1a receptors and yield serotonergic benefits in the form of contentment (see Chapter 10).

  Many people pursue their paths to individual happiness through religion. Yet, over the past two decades, more people (not just Americans) have either been taking paths away from religion4, 5 or changing their path from one religion to another.6 Is secularism winning? Is religion not working? Maybe it’s just your religion that’s got problems . . . In fact, the psychological literature suggests that religious people do tend to be happier. But as we’ve already learned, it depends on how you define happiness. The U.K.’s Office of National Statistics computed the Kahneman-Deaton Life Satisfaction Index of religious people, who
scored only slightly higher than non-believers.7 One study looked carefully at these data, and there was an interaction between “strong religious identity” and “building social networks within their community”;8 for those with weak religious identity, the social network was meaningless. Other studies looked at the relationship between religion and scales of subjective well-being, which tells a slightly different story. The Gallup Organization conducted a poll of 676,000 “religious” people to determine who had the highest subjective well-being. Answer: Jews and Mormons.9 Really? A good proportion of American Jews are secular rather than religious and they tend to kvetch a lot, and Mormons, well . . . they’re Mormons. They’re born smiling. But the data suggests at least three areas of overlap. Both are pro-social and family-focused, and emphasize purpose in life contributing to the greater good.10 Interestingly, the tenets of twelve steps–based addiction programs are pretty similar. An international analysis found a relationship between religiosity and subjective well-being, which demonstrated an interaction between social support and societal circumstances. That is, in impoverished countries, religiosity-predicted social support that predicted subjective well-being.11 Social interaction seems to be the crucial factor in both indices generating contentment.

  Of course, religion also serves a very important practical goal, as this book argues, by making sure reward and contentment remain mutually exclusive (e.g., Onan spilled his seed and God slew him [Genesis 38:9]; the Israelites worshipping the golden calf [Exodus 32:5]; Christian suppression of pleasure with the promise of heaven; Sharia law forbidding alcohol, tobacco, porn, and gambling, and Mormons add coffee to that list). Also, by invoking an afterlife, many religions emphasize the “long” game, rather than the “short” one—although very few practitioners of any religion adhere faithfully.

  So do our three limbic pathways help to explain the effects of well-being in religious people? Neuroscientist Sam Harris, deemed one of the “four horsemen of modern atheism,” scanned the brains of fifteen devout Christians and fifteen atheists while asking them true/false questions about their beliefs and judgments on such things as the Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection.12 Unrelated to belief status, whenever the subject felt the statement was true for them, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) lit up, indicating cognitive thought and endorsement. Other areas of the brain lit up, though inconsistently. This finding argues that belief is a cognitive, or thinking, process rather than a visceral or subconscious one, and that this brain activity is independent of belief status.

  How about serotonin and dopamine? If serotonin makes you content, does it also make you religious? One group performed PET scanning in fifteen healthy subjects using a radiolabel (a radioactive compound that bound like serotonin to the -1a receptor so they could quantify the binding) and found a relationship between “self-transcendence” and “spiritual acceptance” in the DRN (the home of the serotonin neurons), the hippocampus (the home of memory), and the cortex (where thoughts are processed).13 Indeed, certain genotypes of the serotonin-1a receptor are related to these qualities of religiosity.14 So there appears to be some evidence for a role of serotonin influencing religious beliefs. Of course, these are small sample sizes, but the directionality is consistent and therefore worth examining.

  Conversely, dopamine dysregulation is a hallmark of untreated schizophrenia, a form of psychosis; drugs that antagonize the dopamine receptor (e.g., risperidone) are potent antipsychotics. Schizophrenic patients often attest to hyperreligiosity, as their auditory hallucinations can involve hearing God or angels talking to them. In a small study, hyperreligiosity was seen more commonly in schizophrenics than in other causes of psychosis.15 Parkinson’s disease patients, after they are treated with L-DOPA (the precursor to dopamine), have often been noted to exhibit increased religious fervor. It has been proposed that dopamine might be the trigger that takes a person from believer to zealot.16 Of course, the relationship between serotonin, dopamine, and religion is limited to correlation, not causation—speculation, theories waiting to be proven—but it’s clear that the role of biochemistry in the mediation of the religious experience will remain an important research question.

  The one tidbit we can take away from this scientific exploration of religion is that it’s not the incantations, it’s not the incense, it’s not the genuflecting—it’s the social engagement or emotional bonding that correlates with contentment. When you are a part of something larger than yourself—whether united by religion, or tribal origin or heritage, or a worldview, or a hobby, or a common goal—you feel a greater sense of contentment.

  On the Same Wavelength

  We humans are engineered to develop social support—that is, emotional bonding in the form of interpersonal relationships,17 starting with mother-to-baby and working forward over the decades. Social support has a strong evidence base for benefit for the individual and for society. Low social support is linked to progression of numerous illnesses and early death.18 Social contact activates the PFC—which may thereby tamp down the amygdala, thus reducing stress and cortisol—and parts of the reward pathway are linked to various forms of caregiving (like the mother-child bond), which can increase endogenous opioid peptides (EOPs) that further dampen stress hormones.19 There’s even an early line of research that suggests that one’s degree of interpersonal connectivity predicts improved cognitive functioning at different ages (including the elderly), and that just ten minutes of talking to another human being per day can reduce your risk for dementia.20

  People find contentment in being part of a community, which evinces social relationships. Social support correlates with positive emotions, greater reward activation, and increases in serotonin.21 Conversely, low social support correlates with negative emotions such as hostility,22 with less reward for social stimuli23 as well as with low serotonin.

  Have a Heart

  Performing acts of compassion, like visiting a sick friend, provides a powerful sense of connection and is a prime promoter of emotional well-being and contentment. The effects of compassion even register in children’s brains. One study looked at brain wave patterns in six- to ten-year-old children. When they were experiencing contentment, they demonstrated activation of the left PFC, and when they were experiencing empathy, the right PFC was more active.24 Why does empathy travel with contentment? This remains a hotly debated topic. One theory posits that each of us possesses a network of “mirror neurons,” a widely dispersed class of brain cells that work sort of like a neural Wi-Fi. Do an experiment: Call someone on the telephone (not FaceTime) and, somewhere in the conversation, state that you are waving hello. Then ask what they are doing. Chances are they’re waving back. Mirror neurons take in visual, auditory, and tactile information, track the emotional flow, turn this sensed state into emotion, and then transmit it into our own brain to mimic these same emotions. Presumably, visiting a sick person will cheer them up; this will cause the visitor’s mirror neurons to capture the sick person’s joy and activate similar positive feelings in the brain.25 The same is true about serving a meal in a soup kitchen. By improving the lives of others, you improve your own.

  Studies have since attempted to validate this concept by identifying a phenomenon called “interpersonal synchrony,” in which one person’s actions within a relationship alter the experience and the emotion of the other: an empathic connection. Several areas of the brain are activated, but none more so than our old friend Jiminy, our PFC,26 presumably telling the rest of the brain to relax, not be afraid, and to allow the good feelings to flow. This concept of interpersonal synchrony was put to the test by evaluating the responses of people with and without autism spectrum disorder. When the leader input information into a computer for the follower to obey, normal people, as expected, demonstrated synchronous behavior, empathy, and fMRI activation of the PFC. Furthermore, the degree of synchrony correlated with the degree of empathy. However, subjects with autism were unable to demonstrate this synchronous behavior or generate e
mpathy, and their PFCs did not light up,27 suggesting that autism may be a problem of PFC functioning. Thus, the PFC appears to coordinate the emotional response to interpersonal connection. Such coordination of emotions, cardiovascular reactions, or brain states between two people has been studied in mothers with their infants, marital partners arguing, and even among other people in conflict.28

  It would appear that with interpersonal synchrony, the biology of one person can alter the biology of the other. As an example, the Framingham Heart Study started in 1948, and continues to examine the natural history and predictors of chronic disease in the U.S. population. One of the most jarring findings in recent memory was the demonstration that obesity could be “transmitted” within social groups. Usually when we think of disease spreading from one person to another, we think of some kind of infection. But in this cohort, obesity was related to whom you hung out with: your friends determined your weight, possibly because you’re eating the same types of food with them, good or bad.29 These same investigators have also shown that happiness could spread throughout social networks in a similar fashion.30 If you have a happy friend, spouse, sibling, or neighbor who lives within one mile of you, you have a 25 percent chance of being happier. Furthermore, the effect diminished as you moved farther away. What does this mean? It means that it’s the social part of the social network that allows for the transmission of happiness. However, there is a big caveat to this analysis: the data for this study was collected prior to 2003. Facebook was not founded until 2004.

  Fear of Rejection

  So what happens when your social connections rebuff you? What happens when your boyfriend, your debate team, your coach, or your social network abandons you? Is there biochemistry behind emotional rejection? Volunteers underwent fMRI of the brain under two conditions, in random order. One time they had a very hot compress applied to their upper arm. The other time they were shown a picture of their ex. As expected, the hot compress activated the parietal lobe on the opposite side of the body where the pain is registered (because pain fibers cross sides in the brain stem). But otherwise the activation of virtually all parts of the brain completely overlapped in both conditions. Various portions of the limbic system (the emotional part of the brain) were activated, due to either physical pain or social rejection.31 One theory is that the brain’s pain centers may have taken on a hypersensitivity to social exclusion, because until the nineteenth century being an outcast was tantamount to a death sentence. These studies give new meaning to having an “achy, breaky heart.”