Evolution is about reproduction, passing on copies of genes.
Call the game the Wall Street Game, and people become less cooperative. Calling it the Community Game does the opposite. Similarly,
Words pack power and these definitions are laden with values, often wildly idiosyncratic ones. Here’s an example, namely the ways I think about the word competition: (a) competition—your lab team race...
Willpower is more than just a metaphor; self-control is a finite resource. Frontal neurons are expensive cells, and expensive cells are vulnerable cells. Consistent
Why else evolve the fusiform? The shape of women’s faces changes subtly during their ovulatory cycle, and men prefer female faces at the time of ovulation.
When testosterone rises after a challenge, it doesn't prompt aggression. Instead it prompts whatever behaviors are needed to maintain status. This changes things tremendously... Engineer social circu...
Ultimately, forgiveness is usually about one thing—This is for me, not for you. Hatred is exhausting; forgiveness, or even just indifference, is freeing. To quote Booker T. Washington, I shall allow n...
US/THEM-ING TYPICALLY involves inflating the merits of Us concerning core values—we are more correct, wise, moral, and worthy when it comes to knowing what the gods want/running the economy/raising ki...
Thus, shorter refractory periods mean a higher rate of action potentials. So is testosterone causing action potentials in these neurons? No. It’s causing them to fire at a faster rate if they are stim...
Thus, particularly important is a 2011 study that used transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques to temporarily inactivate the vmPFC; subjects became less likely to change their answer to conform.
Thus, over the course of seconds sensory cues can shape your behavior unconsciously.
Thus there’s dopaminergic activation during schadenfreude—gloating over an envied person’s fall from grace.
Thus political orientation about social issues reflects sensitivity to visceral disgust and strategies for coping with such disgust.
This is the critical point of this book: if you are that zebra running for your life, or that lion sprinting for your meal, your body’s physiological response mechanisms are superbly adapted for deali...
This is great. But what I’m grasping at is an idea about a subtler goal. This thinking owes a lot to conversations with Manjula Waldron of Ohio State University, an engineering professor who also happ...
This context dependency means that rather than causing X, testosterone amplifies the power of something else to cause X.
The health risk of poverty turns out to be a huge effect, the biggest risk factor there is in all of behavioral medicine—in other words, if you have a bunch of people of the same gender, age, and ethn...
The defining feature of a major depression is loss of pleasure. If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong e...
The Southern sense of honor in place is also seen in Robert E. Lee; he opposed Southern secession, even made some ambiguous statements that could be viewed as opposed to slavery. Yet when offered the...
Secure-attachment 7Rs show more generosity than average. Thus 7R has something to do with generosity—but its effect is entirely context dependent.