And behavior is altered by situational labels—call the game the Wall Street Game, and people become less cooperative. Calling it the Community Game does the opposite.
A large percentage of what we think of when we talk about stress-related diseases are disorders of excessive stress-responses.
¿Cómo he llegado a esto? ¿Cuándo se volvió tan importante para mí el hecho de pisar terreno sólido y familiar? ¿Cómo he llegado a convertirme en uno de esos tipos que compran antologías tipo lo mejor...
These capacities evolved so recently that our brains are, if you will, winging it and improvising on the fly when dealing with metaphor. As a result, we are actually pretty lousy at distinguishing bet...
There are studies showing that one oxytocin receptor gene variant is associated with extreme aggression in kids, as well as a callous, unemotional style that foreshadows adult psychopathy.54 Moreover,...
Testosterone’s actions are contingent and amplifying, exacerbating preexisting tendencies toward aggression rather than creating aggression out of thin air.
Probably the most important fact about genetics and culture is the delayed maturation of the frontal cortex—the genetic programming for the young frontal cortex to be freer from genes than other brain...
It’s human behavior, human social behavior, and in many cases abnormal human social behavior. And it is indeed a mess, a subject involving brain chemistry, hormones, sensory cues, prenatal environment...
Drugs that decrease serotonergic tone (i.e., decreasing serotonin levels or sensitivity to serotonin) increase impulsive aggression; raising the tone does the opposite. This generates some simple pred...
Aggression, violence, compassion, empathy, sympathy, competition, cooperation, altruism, envy, schadenfreude, spite, forgiveness, reconciliation, revenge, reciprocity, and (why not?) love.
Words have power. They can save, cure, uplift, devastate, deflate, and kill. And unconscious priming with words influences pro- and antisocial behaviors.
Why should people in one part of the globe have developed collectivist cultures, while others went individualist? The United States is the individualism poster child for at least two reasons. First th...
While average finger number is an inherited trait, the heritability of finger number is low—genes don’t explain individual differences much.
We process emotionally salient information more rapidly and automatically, but with less accuracy. Frontal function—working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk assessment, and tas...
University of Cambridge.68 When compared with non-CAH girls, CAH girls do more rough-and-tumble play, fighting, and physical aggression. Moreover, they prefer masculine toys over dolls. As adults they...
Thus, oxytocin and vasopressin facilitate bonding between parent and child and between couples.fn10 Now for something truly charming that evolution has cooked up recently. Sometime in the last fifty t...
This system can indicate that this mouse is John Smith. How does it also tell that he’s your never-before-encountered brother? The closer the relative, the more similar their cluster of MHC genes and...
This level is egoistic in that rules and their application come from within and reflect conscience, where a transgression exacts the ultimate cost—having to live with yourself afterward. It recognizes...
This explains context-dependent craving in addiction.93 Suppose an alcoholic has been clean and sober for years. Return him to where the alcohol consumption used to occur (e.g., that rundown street co...
This addition produces a two-by-two matrix: parenting is authoritative (high demand, high responsiveness), authoritarian (high demand, low responsiveness), permissive (low demand, high responsiveness)...