Another advantage of being a social species is that we do better at our jobs when we work with peers and managers whom we trust. Some employers intentionally foster that trust and reap the benefits. For example, some companies provide free meals to their workers, not just as a tasty perk but also to encourage employees to socialize and brainstorm together. Some offices also contain plenty of impromptu workspaces so employees can collaborate away from their desks. When people work in an environment where they can learn to trust one another, they’ll have less burden on their body budgets, saving resources that can be invested in new ideas.
In general, being a social species is good for us, but there are also disadvantages. We may be healthier and live longer if we have close relationships, but we also get sick and die earlier when we persistently feel lonely—possibly years earlier, based on the data. Without someone else helping to regulate our body budgets, we bear an extra burden. Have you ever lost someone close to you through a breakup or a death and felt like you’d lost a part of yourself? That’s because you did. You lost a source of keeping your bodily systems in balance. The poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, famously wrote, “ ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” In neuroscience terms, a breakup might make you feel like you’re dying, but constant loneliness is likely to hasten your death. This is one argument for why solitary confinement in jail—enforced loneliness—is like capital punishment in slow motion.
A surprising disadvantage of shared body budgeting is that it has an impact on empathy. When you have empathy for other people, your brain predicts what they’ll think and feel and do. The more familiar the other people are to you, the more efficiently your brain predicts their inner struggles. The whole process feels obvious and natural, as if you were reading another person’s mind. But there’s a catch—when people are less familiar to you, it can be harder to empathize. You might have to learn more about the person, an extra effort that translates into more withdrawals from your body budget, which can feel unpleasant. This may be one reason why people sometimes fail to empathize with those who look different or believe different things than they do and why it can feel uncomfortable to try. It’s metabolically costly for a brain to deal with things that are hard to predict. No wonder people create so-called echo chambers, surrounding themselves with news and views that reinforce what they already believe—it reduces the metabolic cost and unpleasantness of learning something new. Unfortunately, it also reduces the odds of learning something that might change a person’s mind.
Besides humans, many other creatures regulate each other’s body budgets. Ants, bees, and other insects do this using chemicals such as pheromones. Mammals like rats and mice use chemicals to communicate by smell, and they add vocal sounds and touch. Primates like monkeys and chimpanzees also use vision to regulate each other’s nervous systems. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom, however, because we also regulate each other with words. A kind word may calm you, as when a friend gives you a compliment at the end of a hard day. A hateful word from a bully may cause your brain to predict threat and flood your bloodstream with hormones, squandering precious resources from your body budget.
The power of words over your biology can span great distances. Right now, I can text the words I love you from the United States to my close friend in Belgium, and even though she cannot hear my voice or see my face, I will change her heart rate, her breathing, and her metabolism. Or someone could text something ambiguous to you like Is your door locked? and odds are that it would affect your nervous system in an unpleasant way.
Your nervous system can be perturbed not only across distances, but also across the centuries. If you’ve ever taken comfort from ancient texts such as the Bible or the Koran, you’ve received body-budgeting assistance from people long gone. Books, videos, and podcasts can warm you or give you the chills. These effects might not last long, but research shows that we all can tweak one another’s nervous systems quickly with mere words in very physical ways that go beyond what you might suspect.
In my research lab, we run experiments that demonstrate the power of words to affect the brain. Our participants lie still in a brain scanner and listen to short descriptions of situations, like this one:
You are driving home after staying out drinking all night. The long stretch of road in front of you seems to go on forever. You close your eyes for a moment. The car begins to skid. You jerk awake. You feel the steering wheel slip in your hands.
As our participants listen to these words, we see increased activity in regions of their brain that are involved in movement, even though their bodies are lying still. We see other activity in regions involved in vision, even though their eyes are closed. And here’s the coolest part: there’s also increased activity in the brain system that controls heart rate, breathing, metabolism, the immune system, hormones, and other internal gunk and junk . . . all from processing the meanings of words!
Why do the words you encounter have such wide-ranging effects inside you? Because many brain regions that process language also control the insides of your body, including major organs and systems that support your body budget. These brain regions, which are contained in what scientists call the “language network,” guide your heart rate up and down. They adjust the glucose entering your bloodstream to fuel your cells. They change the flow of chemicals that support your immune system. The power of words is not a metaphor. It’s in your brain wiring. We see similar wiring in other animals too; for example, neurons that are important for birdsong also control the organs of a bird’s body.
Words, then, are tools for regulating human bodies. Other people’s words have a direct effect on your brain activity and your bodily systems, and your words have that same effect on other people. Whether you intend that effect is irrelevant. It’s how we’re wired.
How far can these effects go? For example, can words be harmful to your health? In small doses, not really. When someone says things you don’t like or insults you or even threatens your physical safety, you might feel awful as your body budget is taxed in that moment, but there’s no physical damage to your brain or body. Your heart might race, your blood pressure might change, you might ooze sweat, and so forth, but then your body recovers and your brain might even be a bit stronger afterward. Evolution gifted you with a nervous system that can cope with these sorts of temporary metabolic changes and even benefit from them. Occasional stress can be like exercise. Brief withdrawals from your body budget followed by deposits create a stronger, better you.
But if you are stressed over and over and over again, without much opportunity to recover, the effects can be far more grave. If you constantly struggle in a simmering sea of stress, and your body budget accrues an ever-deepening deficit, that’s called chronic stress, and it does more than just make you miserable in the moment. Over time, anything that contributes to chronic stress can gradually eat away at your brain and cause illness in your body. This includes physical abuse, verbal aggression, social rejection, severe neglect, and the countless other creative ways that we social animals torment one another.
It’s important to understand that the human brain doesn’t seem to distinguish between different sources of chronic stress. If your body budget is already depleted by the circumstances of life—like physical illness, financial hardship, hormone surges, or simply not sleeping or exercising enough—your brain becomes more vulnerable to stress of all kinds. This includes the biological effects of words designed to threaten, bully, or torment you or people you care about. When your body budget is continually burdened, momentary stressors pile up, even the kind that you’d normally bounce back from quickly. It’s like children jumping on a bed. The bed might withstand ten kids bouncing at the same time, but the eleventh one snaps the bed frame.
Simply put, a long period of chronic stress can harm a human brain. Scientific studies are absolutely clear on this point. When you’re on the receiving end of ongoing insults a
nd threats, for example, studies show that you’re more likely to get sick. Scientists don’t understand all the underlying mechanisms yet, but we know it happens.
These studies of verbal aggression tested average people across the political spectrum, left, right, and center. (We are all social animals, regardless of our stripes.) If people insult you, their words won’t hurt your brain the first time, or the second, or maybe even the twentieth. But if you’re exposed to verbal nastiness continually for months and months or if you live in an environment that persistently and relentlessly taxes your body budget, words can indeed physically injure your brain. Not because you’re weak or a so-called snowflake, but because you’re a human. Your nervous system is bound up with the behavior of other humans, for better or for worse. You can argue what the data means or if it’s important, but it is what it is.
Two other studies, which I find remarkable as a scientist but unnerving as a person, measured the effects of stress on eating. One study found that if you’re exposed to social stress within two hours of a meal, your body metabolizes the food in a way that adds 104 calories to the meal. If this happens daily, that’s eleven pounds gained per year! Not only that, but if you eat healthful, saturated fats, such as those found in nuts, within one day of being stressed, your body metabolizes these foods as if they were filled with bad fats. I’m not saying this is a license to choose French fries over fish oil when you’re stressed. You have to live with your own conscience there. But stress quite literally can make you gain weight.
The best thing for your nervous system is another human. The worst thing for your nervous system is also another human. This situation leads us to a fundamental dilemma of the human condition. Your brain needs other people in order to keep your body alive and healthy, and at the same time, many cultures strongly value individual rights and freedoms. Dependence and freedom are naturally in conflict. How, then, can we best respect and cultivate individual rights when we are social animals who regulate one another’s nervous systems to survive?
To answer this question, I must loosen my white lab coat a bit as I gingerly dip a toe into political waters. There’s an authentic tension between a belief in individual freedom, which implies you can say almost anything you want to anyone, and the biological fact that humans have socially dependent nervous systems, which means your words affect other people’s bodies and brains. It is not a scientist’s job to declare how to resolve this tension. But it is a scientist’s job to point out that the biology is real and motivate people to grapple with the issues that play out in our social and political world. So here goes.
First off, any global solution to this dilemma is impossible, because different cultures have different values. Hate speech, for example, is legal in the United States as long as you don’t overtly threaten to harm someone. In certain other parts of the world, simple criticism can get you a death sentence.
Moreover, in my experience, the fundamental dilemma of freedom versus dependence can be difficult to even discuss, let alone solve. If you attempt to have a dialogue about this dilemma in the United States, or even raise the issue, invariably someone will accuse you of being a socialist or claim that you’re against the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Freedom, however, is a bipartisan issue around the world; we all want it, depending on the point in question. When debating gun ownership in the United States, conservatives tend to support personal freedom and liberals tend to advocate for control. When debating abortion, it’s the other way around; conservatives tend to advocate control while liberals tend to support personal freedom.
Here in the United States, the solution to our dilemma is certainly not to restrict our freedom of speech. After all, history is filled with examples of overcoming our biology so we can live our values. Other people carry germs, for example, that can make us sick or even kill us, but only in the most nightmarish cases do we legislate a solution that restricts our personal freedoms. More commonly, we cooperate and innovate. We invent soap, we bump elbows instead of shaking hands, we search for new medicines and vaccines, and so on. If this is insufficient, experts tell us we’re supposed to voluntarily isolate ourselves and practice social distancing. Even in a free society, our actions affect one another in ways that are, like viruses, often invisible to us.
A more realistic approach to our dilemma, I think, at least in the United States, is to realize that freedom always comes with responsibility. We are free to speak and act, but we are not free from the consequences of what we say and do. We might not care about those consequences, or we might not agree that those consequences are justified, but they nonetheless have costs that we all pay.
We pay the costs of increased health care for illnesses, like diabetes, cancer, depression, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, that are worsened by chronic stress. We pay the costs of ineffective government when politicians spew crap at one another and make personal attacks instead of having the reasoned debate that the Founding Fathers of the United States envisioned. We pay the costs of a citizenry that struggles to discuss politically charged topics with one another productively, a standoff that weakens our democracy.
We also pay the costs of reduced innovation in a global economy, because when people are persistently stressed, they don’t learn as well. Creativity and innovation often mean failing repeatedly and having the tenacity to pick yourself up and try again. This extra effort takes extra energy. Your brain already burns 20 percent of your body’s entire metabolic budget, making it the most “expensive” organ in your body, and every moment of your life, it makes economic decisions about what energy to spend, when to spend it, and when to save it. If you’re already burdened with a body budget that’s in the red, you’re less likely to be a visionary spender.
Scientists are often asked to make their research useful to everyday life. These scientific findings about words, chronic stress, and disease are a perfect example. There is a real biological benefit when people treat one another with basic human dignity. And if we don’t, there is also a real biological consequence, and it eventually trickles down to a financial and social cost for everyone. The price of personal freedom is personal responsibility for your impact on others. The wiring of all of our brains guarantees it.
As our society makes decisions about health care, the law, public policy, and education, we can ignore our socially dependent nervous systems, or we can take them seriously. These discussions may be difficult, but avoiding them is worse. Our biology won’t just go away.
Taking our species’ interdependence seriously doesn’t mean restricting rights. It can mean simply understanding the impact we have on one another. Each of us can be the kind of person who makes more deposits into other people’s body budgets than withdrawals or the kind of person who is a drain on the health and welfare of those around us.
Sometimes it’s necessary to say things that other people find offensive or don’t like. That’s an essential part of democracy. But in these situations, do we just want to speak, or do we also want to be heard? If the latter, then our messages may be more effective if we give more consideration to how they’re delivered. The form of delivery can make an already difficult message easier or harder on a listener’s body budget. When we speak freely, it makes sense to communicate in ways that encourage others to listen.
Most people eat food farmed by others. Many live in homes built by others. Our nervous systems are tended by others. Your brain secretly works with other brains. This hidden cooperation keeps us healthy, so it matters how we treat one another in a very real, brain-wiring way. Therefore, we’re not only more responsible for babies (lesson no. 3) and for ourselves (lesson no. 4) than we might think; we’re also more responsible for other adults than we might think. Or want. Like it or not, we influence the brains and bodies of those around us with our actions and words, and they return the favor.
Lesson No.
6
Brains Make More than One Kind of Mind
> WHEN PEOPLE FROM the island of Bali in Indonesia are afraid, they fall asleep. Or at least, that’s what they’re supposed to do.
Falling asleep might seem like a strange thing to do when you’re afraid. If you’re from a Western culture, you’re supposed to freeze on the spot, widen your eyes, and gasp. You can also squeeze your eyes shut and scream, like a teenage babysitter in a bad horror movie. Or you can run away from whatever is scaring you. These behaviors are Western stereotypes for proper fear behavior. In Bali, the stereotype is to fall asleep.
What kind of mind snoozes out of fear? A kind of mind that’s different from yours.
Human brains make many different kinds of minds. I don’t just mean that your mind is different from your friends’ and neighbors’. I’m talking about minds that have different basic features. For example, if you are from a Western culture, like I am, your mind has features called thoughts and emotions, and the two feel fundamentally different from each other. But people who grow up in Balinese culture, as well as in the Ilongot culture in the Philippines, do not experience what we Westerners call cognition and emotion as different kinds of events. They experience what we would call a blend of thinking and feeling, but to them it’s a single thing. If you find this kind of mental feature hard to imagine, that’s okay. You don’t have a Balinese kind of mind.
As another example, Western minds often try to guess what other people are thinking or feeling. This mental inference is such a basic and valuable skill in our culture that when we encounter people who are not so good at it, we may see them as abnormal instead of merely different. But in some other cultures, attempts to peer into another person’s mind are considered unnecessary. The Himba people of Namibia often figure each other out by observing each other’s behavior, not by inferring a mental life behind that behavior. If you smile at an American, his brain might guess that you’re happy to see him and predict that you’ll say hello. If you smile at a Himba, his brain might predict only the hello (moro, in their language).
Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain Page 7