Hood, Bruce - Supersense

LOVE IS THE DRUG

Faces may be the initial patterns that draw our attention, but it is the emotional experience during intimate moments with those we care about that creates a tangible sense of connectedness. For example, most newborn babies look like grumpy old men with wrinkled skin and bald heads, but to parents these miniature old codgers are beautiful. Mothers can’t help falling in love with their babies because nature has slipped them a Mickey Finn cocktail of hormones that forge a passionate bond. Fathers feel it too, but deep down nature really intended this to be a mother–baby thing. It’s not as if mothers have a choice. Their bodies are awash with chemical messengers controlling their emotions and behaviour.

One chemical is the oxytocin that surges through the mother’s brain around the time of birth to trigger the uterine contractions. It’s also active during breast-feeding. Outside of mothering, oxytocin is stimulated by the physical contact of sex. It’s no surprise then that research has revealed that oxytocin plays a role in social bonding. Weirdly, we know this because of two species of vole. Prairie voles engage in an intense twenty-four-hour courtship, after which they mate for life. On the other hand, their almost genetically identical cousins, montane voles, are promiscuous and have a preference for one-night stands. They do not pair-bond for life. One explanation is that the reward centre in the brain of prairie voles is sensitive to oxytocin, whereas the same centre in montane voles is not. 12Oxytocin gives prairie voles that loving feeling because their reward centres are satiated when they mate, but this doesn’t happen in montane voles. As Mick Jagger sings, they can’t get no satisfaction. When sex scientists blocked reward pathways in the prairie voles, they too became promiscuous with female partners. They did not stick around in the morning or return calls. However, when an injection of a love cocktail including oxytocin was administered to prairie voles, it worked like cupid’s arrow, and they bonded again. You could say that those of us who fall deeply in love are behaving just like prairie voles.

When we say the chemistry is just right between two people, there is real alchemy taking place. Sexual attraction and falling in love are experiences enriched with emotions automatically triggered by a cascade of hormones. These are present in the very first social exchanges between babies and mothers but continue to fuel the passion of social intimacy throughout our lives. When this happens, we feel bewitched, enchanted, under a spell, charmed, and generally not in control. Something strange takes hold of us, and rational thinking seems to fly out the window. Breaking down human attraction into chemical neurotransmitters and sensory stimulus patterns may be how science describes the experience, but when Frank Sinatra sang about that old black magic called love, he was describing the supersense that there are mysterious forces at work when people fall in love.

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE

Chemicals and appearance are just two ingredients in the mix of social connectedness. Timing is everything for social relationships too. When two people don’t get on, they often say that they just didn’t click. We are rhythmic creatures who move in patterns and feel most comfortable with those who move in synchrony with ourselves. Just watch how lovers flirt during a courtship. They exchange glances, utterances, and caresses. If the timing is not right, the relationship is usually doomed.

Movement is also a fundamental way to identify whether something is alive or not. For example, aspects of movement tell us when we are dealing with an animal or an object. Objects move in a rigid fashion, whereas animals have a fluid, groovy motion. The next time you are in a shopping mall, watch how other people move. Smoothly and fluidly, shoppers steer and glide past each other to avoid collisions. Machines couldn’t negotiate a busy street full of people. Second, the type of movement is instantly obvious. If you attach luminous reflectors to a person’s forehead, elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles, then turn the room lights off, you see nine separate glowing spots in the dark. However, as soon as that person moves, you immediately see him or her as a person. 13Stop and the person becomes nine stationary points again. That’s because our brains are exquisitely tuned in to the smooth movements of living things even when we can’t see their bodies. It’s so fundamental that when shown these lights point displays, even babies as young as four months see the invisible person. 14

Like faces, sometimes movement can fool us into thinking that something has a mind. For example, toys that seem to come alive fascinate children. In my day, one of the popular toys was a piece of finely coiled wire called a ‘Slinky’. It could appear to walk by stretching and lifting up one end over another down an incline, a bit like an acrobatic caterpillar. The attraction of the Slinky on Christmas Day was the lifelike movement it had as it stepped down the stairs before someone trod on it or twisted the spring and ruined it for good. Toys that appear to be alive are curiosities because they challenge how we think inanimate objects and living things should behave. Many toys today exploit this principle to great effect, but be warned: not all babies enjoy objects that suddenly seem lifelike. This anxiety probably reflects their confusion over the question, ‘Is it alive or what?’

Once babies decide that something is alive, they are also inclined to see its movements as purposeful. They are beginning to infer a mind controlling the movements. In one study, twelve-month-olds faced a stuffed toy on a pedestal. 15It looked like a kind of furry brown Russian hat known as a ‘shapka’, with two button eyes for a face. Hardly the most convincing example of a living creature. However, unbeknownst to the baby, the shapka was remotely controlled by scientists hidden in another room. The baby watched the shapka. The shapka watched the baby. It was like the standoff in a spaghetti western. After a short uncomfortable silence, the hat suddenly beeped and moved. The baby was surprised and looked towards its mother for some explanation. None was offered. The baby pointed at the shapka and vocalized. The hat responded back with beeping. The scientists controlling the shapka made sure that it responded to every utterance and movement the infant made. Very soon the baby and hat were engaged in a meaningless but richly synchronized social exchange. When the hat swung around as if to look off to the side, the baby followed suit to see where the shapka was looking. The baby was treating the hat as if it had purpose. Simply by interacting in a synchronized way with the baby’s own responses, the shapka and baby had become the best of buddies.

Babies respond to such exchanges as if the objects are alive and have purpose. They infer intentions. However, if the shapka had simply moved randomly and had not had a face, this social connection would not have been made, and the babies would not have copied or tried to follow the hat’s lead. So movement and faces lead to the inference of intentional purpose. It’s such a powerful combination that it is almost impossible to ignore.

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KID

Humans are natural people-watchers, and most of the time we look at faces and eyes. The focus of another person’s gaze is a very powerful signal for us to look in the same direction. Magic Johnson was a great basketball player because he used the ‘no look’ pass: he could pass the ball to a teammate without taking his eye off his opponent. 16He could control his gaze to hold the other player’s attention and not betray with his eyes where he was about to pass. More impressive was his ability to look toward one teammate and then pass to a completely different person, sending the defender on the opposite team in the wrong direction.