Top Quotes “The Happy Brain: The Science of Where Happiness Comes From, and Why” — Dean Burnett
Background: Burnett is a neuroscientist who walks the reader through research on how happiness is created in the brain. He doesn’t directly tell you tips for being happy, but knowing how happiness is generated certainly gave me some great ideas on how to foster my own joy! Some of his insights seem to directly explain through neuroscience things like why teenagers rebel and why conservative people have no empathy for others. He does a great job of breaking down technical concepts into regular human diction and I enjoyed expanding my scientific knowledge.
The Brain’s Rewards
“Dopamine release is affected by how surprising a reward or experience is. The more unexpected something is, the more we enjoy it. Expected rewards correspond with an initial dopamine surge, which then tails off. But unexpected rewards correspond with an increased level of dopamine release for a longer period after the reward is experienced. This is why finding a $20 bill in your pocket is more exciting than your bi-weekly paycheck.”
“Human women have adapted to deploy endorphins to dampen the pain of childbirth and stop it from reaching heart-stopping levels. This could also contribute to the almost deliriously happy state women experience the moment a baby is born. Thanks to endorphins, childbirth, no matter how grueling it is, could be worse.”
“Oxytocin is important for forming and enhancing social bonds but it is also released during sex. Thanks to it, sexual interaction can fundamentally alter your perception of your partner, changing purely physical affection to genuine affection and longing. Oxytocin strengthens existing romantic bonds, but doesn’t create them per se.”
“Oxytocin has a down side. Increasing your social bonds with an individual or group can increase your hostility to anyone outside that bond. One study found that men dosed with oxytocin were much quicker to ascribe negative traits to anyone not from their culture or ethnic background. You’ve probably witnessed someone experiencing bitter jealousy, even hatred, when the object of their affection is seen to interact in an overly friendly way with someone else — the fact that ‘crimes of passion’ exist shows just how potent this reaction can be.”
“Songs that have a specific balance between predictability and chaos induce pleasure in our brains, making us happy to the point where we’re compelled to physically respond. It’s not a simple yes/no matter of something making us happy or not; often, it’s a specific amount of something that makes us happy, and more or less has the opposite effect.”
“In a 1966 study, volunteers’ sleep was much reduced and disrupted for their first night sleeping in a new place, but not for subsequent nights. In unfamiliar surroundings, part of our brain remains slightly more ‘awake,’ keeping us vigilant at a subconscious level.”
“There are ‘boundary cells,’ neurons that activate when we come to a specific environmental boundary, like a river that marks the end of your territory, or a door that leads from your house to outside. They’re neurons that activate whenever our senses detect where our current environment ‘ends,’ letting us know that we’re about to cross an important threshold. Sophisticated spatial systems like this let us know where we are and where we’re going, especially with regards to our homes. This helps explain why we can often find our way home without even thinking about it, like when we’re somewhat intoxicated.”
“Our very perception is altered to avoid unnecessary effort. Our consciousness, our view of the world, is subtly changed to avoid pointless hard work. People will reliably say an odor labeled something like ‘spring meadow’ smells much nicer than one labeled something like ‘used toilet water,’ even if both odors are identical. Objects relevant to our current goals can appear ‘bigger’ in our vision, and hills and climbs can seem steeper than they are if we’re in a negative frame of mind. It seems our perception is often altered to discourage us from things the brain’s decided it doesn’t approve of.”
“Faced with incompatibility between our thoughts, behaviors, and actions, our brains will do what’s necessary to resolve the conflict. And if it can’t change the reality, it’ll change what you believe and think. And thus, your ideal self, your life goals, can change, because the brain instinctively protects us from stress and failure where possible. So while our work may not be of any use when it comes to pursuing our ambitions, there are situations where our brain will instinctively alter our ambitions so it is, to increase our chances of being happy.”
“By enduring trauma and unpleasantness, our brains have a very clear memory of going through that and are instilled with a deep and enduring motivation to avoid it again at all costs. It seems that one of the things that makes our brains more motivated to succeed is a direct and visceral experience of failure and despair.”
“Experiencing a wide range of possible emotions, good and bad, means we also gain greater emotional competence, allowing us to react and respond appropriately.”
The Social Brain
“Human social groups got so successful that the usual ecological processes driving evolution no longer applied; if you’re part of a human community, you’re protected from things like predators and have ready access to food, safety, mates, etc. So succeeding in the environment was less successful than succeeding in the community. Survival of the fittest now means survival of the most likable, friendly individuals, able to benefit the group with ideas and innovations like tools and agriculture. These individuals were the ones who succeeded, got to spread their genes. But all those things require greater intelligence. Several hundred thousand years later, here we are.” “If you give a chimp a banana, it’ll focus on the banana. ‘A banana. I like bananas. I’ll eat that.’ If you give a human a banana, they’ll focus on you. “Why’s this person giving me a banana? What do they want?’ This is what happens when a species evolves according to social rather than environmental pressures. If your survival depends on your community, the more social you are, the greater your chances of acceptance and survival.”
“We can essentially share happiness. It can spread. Our brains allow us to ‘experience’ the happiness of others, as well as our own. So we do something we enjoy, which makes us happy, and if we’re with someone who also enjoys it we empathize with them, which makes us happier, plus our brain rewards us for our social interactions, which makes us happier again, and so on.”
“Our brain processes financial and social rewards in the same (or at least similar) ways, so we can get the same sense of pleasure and satisfaction from both.”
“Embarrassment is a social emotion, an emotion that depends on the thoughts, feelings, or actions of other people. Similar social emotions are guilt, jealousy, and grief. So important do our brains think social interactions are, they’ve evolved specific, dedicated emotions to regulate them!”
Sex & Love
“Certain body types tend to be more arousing than others. Rippling abs, curvy hips, sensual full lips, big muscles; these tend to get us more ‘fired up’ than a glimpse of an earlobe or elbow. The reason for this is that they’re considered ‘secondary sex characteristics,’ features that evolved to attract mates, but aren’t part of the reproductive process.”
“Sex with a partner is different than masturbation for the brain. You don’t need to imagine having sex with someone if you are having sex with someone, therefore those higher brain regions don’t have much to do and can be ‘powered down.’ This would explain why, even though we humans can trigger our sexual reward system ourselves, whenever we want (within the bounds of the law), we’re seldom content to do just that, so we still pursue sexual partners.”
“Levels of serotonin (the neurotransmitter seemingly vital for feelings of calmness, relaxation, and emotional well-being) are reduced when we’re in love, which has potent consequences. We lose sleep, deal with intrusive thoughts, our motivations and desires are altered, meaning things that once gave us pleasure seem inconsequential now, so we end up ignoring our usual friends and pastimes, much to everyone else’s annoyance. Expressions like ‘being crazy’ about someone or ‘head over heels’ imply instability, a loss of control and rational behavior, which does seem to be the case.”
“When you’re in love, you’re simply less capable of worrying about everyday things, so of course being in love makes you happy; your brain is flooded with the chemical responsible for feelings of pleasure and reward, and your ability to experience stress and worry is diminished.”
“The brain already has optimistic biases for things we like, and if you shut down the fault-finding abilities too, love makes us immune to a person’s flaws. Have you ever wondered why people stay with partners who are dreadful? Falling in love with someone is hugely demanding for our brain, and love makes us happy, so worryingly, our brains go to extreme lengths to keep us loving someone, even if that’s logically a very bad idea.”
“If we fall in love, we still have all the hopes and dreams and plans and ambitions we did before we met our special someone. Unfortunately, though, it’s entirely possible to fall in love with someone who, actively or passively, presents an obstacle to those. Our brains are therefore presented with a decision to make; what makes us happier: our relationship, or all our other plans and dreams? When we’re still in the honeymoon phase, things will likely be heavily in favor of the relationship, but as that passes it’s a lot less clear. The reason, then, that finding love doesn’t mean an automatic ‘happy ever after’ is likely to be the fact that life doesn’t stop just because we find someone to share it with. The brain’s mechanism for making us fall in love with someone may be powerful, but it’s still not all-consuming, and life is throwing constant changes and upsets at our nice, calm status quo. Some relationships won’t withstand the pressures the world throws at us.”
“Maybe the brain’s method of creating and supporting love made more sense when we were more primitive creatures who spent our much shorter lives in small, limited communities, but that was a long time ago. With our powerful modern cerebrums granting us rich, long, complex inner lives and a similarly complex society to spend them in, a long-term romantic relationship is obviously going to require a lot more effort to sustain. Saying finding love will make you ‘happy ever after’ is like saying the best meal ever will satisfy your hunger forever; as nice as it is, it won’t, because that’s not how the world works. Neither the brain nor the world is static, fixed in place. What makes you happy today may not make you happy tomorrow, so any relationship needs time and effort spent on it to endure. Luckily, because it’s with someone you love, this time and effort itself can be rewarding and make you happy.”
“Especially for women, areas of the brain particularly involved in pain processing, are very active during sex. There is clearly some logic to this, because sex can easily be painful. It wouldn’t be ridiculous for the brain to evolve a system to deal with this, modulating the sensation of pain during sex so it’s actually perceived as something more pleasurable. Which, in turn, would certainly explain why so many sexual kinks and behaviors incorporate pain.”
“The general expectation for people to be so private and secretive about sex could be a big factor in why people can become so unhappy about it. If you have an amazing holiday, you can tell everyone about it, and show them your holiday snaps. But if you have an amazing orgy, you…can’t really do that.”
“The experience of sex has an alarmingly powerful impact on the brain, so we’re quick to learn associations related to it, and because people’s experiences differ wildly, so our eventual sexual preferences vary substantially. Say you have your first sexual encounter in the back of a car. The amygdala and hippocampus are firing like mad throughout, so, especially if it’s your first time, the event is likely to be effectively burned into your memory. From that point on, you may have a fondness for car sex.”
“Our powerful intellects mean we have very detailed ideas of what love, sex, and relationships should be like, and these shape our behaviors, our motivations, and our expectations. A lot of this is backed up by (often illogical) societal attitudes and views, and being the intensely social species we are, we tend to absorb all this and incorporate it into our own ideas and ideals. Sadly, life takes place in the real world, and said real world often doesn’t give a damn about your dreams and desires. You can put ample time and effort into pursuing your romantic and sexual interests, only to have it go unrewarded. And if you do find love, that doesn’t mean the brain mechanisms that got you to this point wither away. The systems underlying attraction and arousal are still there, so it’s entirely possible to be ‘stimulated’ by someone other than your partner.”
“These things that everyone assumes will make us happy, namely sex, love, and romance, can make us seriously unhappy if our brains are too focused on them, at the expense of other things that likely would make us happy. Essentially, the pursuit of happiness is often self-defeating. Perhaps this is the root cause of much of the angst and strife that lies at the heart of what it means to be human?”
Laughter
“Laughter is also found in primates like chimpanzees, but theirs sounds different from ours — more like ‘frantically sawing through a wooden plank.’ These different types of laughter diverged from a common ancestor species, between 10 and 16 million years ago. Far from being uniquely human, laughter is maybe four times older than humanity itself!”
“That apes or rats laugh when tickled suggests that the origins of laughter are based on play. It’s how you differentiate playful behavior from a genuine physical attack from a rival. It’s argued that laughter evolved to reflexively signal pleasure and acceptance, to say’ this is OK, carry on’ when there is clearly no intention to harm. Laughter has been shown to extend the duration of playful interactions, such as tickling. It also explains why we enjoy laughter so much; it means more play, which is beneficial, so we’ve evolved to experience reward when we laugh.”
“Tickling is one of the very first things human babies laugh at, providing a simple and effective way for parents to bond with little ones. Babies actually start laughing at around three months, before they’re able to walk or talk, which again reveals how fundamental and important laughter is.”
“Things which induce laughter by presenting an unexpected change or surprise, but one that is safe, in a familiar social context are called ‘proto humor.’ This allows the baby/chip/rat to experience something novel and learn something new and potentially useful, in the absence of any danger or risk. This is beneficial for a working brain, so pleasurable laughter is experienced as reward, to encourage this.”
“The brain system that recognizes humor is activated when it recognizes something as inconsistent with expectations, or the way events or exchanges usually proceed. If normality is subverted it means we don’t know what’s going to happen next, which creates cognitive tension. The same system provides a remedy, removing the uncertainty and dispersing the tension.”
“When another person falls spectacularly into some mud; an unusual thing occurs, something incongruous that isn’t part of the predictable stream of events in daily life, which produces an immediate sense of tension and uncertainty. But the brain rapidly works out what happened and that there’s no immediate danger. Uncertainty is removed, tension is dissipated, and something novel is experienced, all with no inherent risk. All beneficial things for the brain, so an immediate and potent experience of pleasure occurs. It makes us happy.”
“And that’s why we enjoy humor so much, and so often; our brains try to impose sense and order on the world, but there’s so much that can thwart this, so we’ve evolved a system to spot when this happens, and resolve it as soon as we can. And as doing so is beneficial, it makes us happy.”
“If you have a more intelligent, faster-working brain, you would likely be better at detecting and resolving incongruity, perhaps even anticipating it, so little effort is required for simple examples. This means it takes greater complexity to trigger your humor system, so you’re likely to prefer more sophisticated jokes, rather than being reduced to hysterics by a man in a dress. It also explains why a joke is never as good when you hear it a second time; the incongruity and resolution have already been detected and resolved, so the stimulating effects of the joke are substantially reduced.”
“We are thirty times more likely to laugh when part of a crowd than when alone.”
The Unique You
“Some influences are persistent and enduring, effectively ‘loading the dice’ in favor of an outcome; you grow up in a very musical family, you’ll be surrounded by music all the time, so will probably have strong feelings about music — love it or hate it. Other influences, while temporary, can be incredibly powerful and engage many areas of the brain in significant ways, such as your first sexual encounter. Someone whose first sexual experience is with a redhead way well end up persistently attracted to redheads. The brain is quick to learn novel things with highly stimulating, emotional properties, so in this instance the basic learning processes rapidly make a “redheads = sexual pleasure” association. The brain is good at generalizing here; it doesn’t have to be the exact same redhead each time, because similar stimuli can produce a similar reaction, resulting in an overall fondness for things that have preferred elements in common. That’s why we like certain bands, or styles of music, or genres of film, rather than just one specific example that we first discovered and enjoyed. This does mean that if someone likes something you hate, then there’s a great chance of them liking other things that you are more likely to dislike. Differences between you become wider and wider.”
“Information with a significant emotional element or which leads to arousal takes precedence over more neutral information that lacks these qualities. So, if we eat deep-fried cheese nuggets, it tastes gooooooood and our brain learns deep-fried cheese = good. Contrast that with being told, via some pamphlet, about the long-term effects of fatty foods on cholesterol levels and arteries. Nowhere near as arousing as actually eating the stuff. So we’re aware that eating fried cheese is ‘bad’ in some abstract way, but we know it’s extremely pleasurable. And the latter has a better chance of influencing behavior.”
“This also explains why, unless you’re passionate about such things, learning about science or math is difficult; it’s mostly abstract, intangible information, with little or no emotional or stimulating elements. It’s a lot of work for no immediate, tangible reward, which makes it even harder again, because the parts of our brain that monitor such things don’t approve of this.”
“Positive” Biases
“Due to an optimism bias, we tend to assume a best-case scenario is the most likely outcome, based on nothing more than baseless assumptions. In many ways, this is actually helpful; a positive outlook is reliably linked to improved mental well-being and tolerance of stressful events, and can help with motivation and goals. On the other hand, assuming things will turn out fine can be unhelpful, even self-defeating. ‘I could avoid getting lung cancer by quitting smoking, but I’ll probably not get it anyway, so why bother?’— and then you get lung cancer. See how that works?”
“Our brains seem weird for fairness. When we’re treated fairly by others, it activates the reward pathways in our brain, much like eating chocolate does, and perception of unfairness causes significantly raised activity in the striatum, which is all about social acceptance and approval. This works fine when it’s a small group sharing berries or recently acquired meat, but our societies are huge and complex now; we don’t see what goes on in the tangled webs of infrastructure or behind closed doors, so we only have limited information to go on. As a result, we now regularly see unfairness where there isn’t any — like people getting “free stuff” from the government.”
“There’s also the ‘just world hypothesis,’ which describes the persistent belief that the world isn’t random or chaotic, but fair and just, that good deeds are rewarded and the bad punished. Given that the human brain has an innate liking for fairness and a tendency to expect the best, this belief in a just world makes sense. This could be potentially helpful; assuming that good actions are rewarded and our efforts will be recognized would motivate us toward long-term goals. Problem is, the world isn’t fair. Bad things happen to good people for no reason and awful people are regularly big winners in life. So when confronted by these examples, it causes a dissonance; to reconcile this, we have two choices: completely change our belief system of how we see the world and override a bias baked into our brains, or we can work out why it actually is fair! And that’s what we often instinctively do. That woman who was assaulted? She was asking for it dressed provactively! That evil millionaire? That’s what business does to you, it’s a harsh world, and he does provide jobs for many people, so a few assassinations are fine!”
“There’s also the common attribution bias, meaning we blame the misfortune of others on their own incompetence or poor decisions, while if the same thing happens to us, we attribute it to bad luck or circumstance. The more the other person has in common with us, the more potent this bias is. If they’re a lot like you, it becomes much harder to distance yourself from their misfortune, meaning it feels all too possible for you to suffer the same fate. One way to reduce the anxiety and fear this realization causes is to assume they’re just an idiot, and only have themselves to blame. That way, you don’t need to worry about it happening to you, because you’re not an idiot.”
“It is a depressing fact of society that male status is frequently measured by number of female sex partners. So, men who don’t get sex are lower status, which is upsetting to them. Furthermore, the sexualized female form is omnipresent in our media and advertising, making it nigh-on impossible to ignore sex, particularly since male arousal seems to be vision-based. Add this to the existence of porn presenting women as passive recipients of sex for any passing man, coupled with endless mainstream examples of beautiful women ending up with less physically impressive men because they’re a bit nice to them. All of this could lead to certain men ending up with a worldview in which obtaining sex is a key part of their identity, and a belief that women should, and will, provide it as and when required for any man who demonstrates the right behavior or says the correct come-on line. Since women don’t lack autonomy and individuality in this manner, the expectations of such men are regularly thwarted; the ‘effort’ they put in is not rewarded. The brain reacts very badly to all this, resulting in anger and hostility toward women, the finding of like-minded groups (usually online) to share their frustrations with, and then group polarization kicks in and they end up hating women as much as possible.”
“We can enjoy fear because it takes your system a while to return to normal after experiencing it. As a result, previously neutral things become more stimulating, because your brain has been ‘kicked up a gear.’ The excitation of the scary thing is transferred to other things that would usually be mundane. Adding to this is the fact that our brain’s reward pathways aren’t just activated when something nice happens, but when something bad stops happening. Our glad-to-be-alive brains are experiencing rewarding sensations that are heightened by the residual excitement.”
“It’s normal to have thoughts and impulses that you really feel you shouldn’t. Remember that the powerful human brain can predict and imagine and anticipate events and outcomes by forming a constantly updating mental model of the world. But the brain doesn’t just sit and wait for things to happen; it’s constantly testing limits and assessing options. This means many possible options for action are considered in every situation, even hypothetical ones, and a lot of these options are going to be unpleasant, or wrong. We have moral boundaries, ethical limitations and taboos, some of which are instinctive (like not wanting to be rejected by a group) but many of which result from culture. In most cultures, inflicting serious harm on others is considered seriously immoral. And yet it’s an option, and thanks to all our baser instincts and compulsions, it’s something we can, and do, think about. Often, these alarming thoughts appear and disappear rapidly, being dismissed as soon as they’re produced. This is technically healthy, as it reinforces the limits of our mental model of the world; it’s like the brain approaching a wire fence, hearing it hum, realizing it’s electric, and backing off. ‘Can we do down this route? Nope! OK, let’s try something else.’ Forbidden thoughts may be the brain’s way of checking where the boundaries are.”
“The more effort the brain invests in suppressing a thought, the harder it becomes to do so. Have you ever tried to force yourself to relax to go to sleep? What happens is, by trying to suppress a thought you don’t want, the brain then turns it from a passive to a more active process, so more of the brain is engaged by it, making you more aware of it, and so it gains priority over other thoughts, and you start doubting yourself and worry about your actions, which makes you more concerned, so you dwell on it more.”
From Childhood to Old Age
“When evolution awarded us more brainpower, this required bigger heads and skulls. Butt his growth was localized to our heads; our body size is consistent with primate averages. As a result, our heads grow ‘faster’ than the rest of our bodies. A baby’s body is about 5 percent of its eventual adult size, but its head is around 25 percent. Because the dimensions of the birth canal are restricted by the width of the sold bone female pelvis, babies need to be born while their delicate heads still fit through it. But because evolution has caused our heads to develop at an increased rate, our bodies aren’t as fully developed as they ‘should’ be when they emerge into the world. Babies are born at a much earlier stage of physical development than most other species. This could explain why children can learn so much and are so sensitive to what is around them in their first year of life.”
“Your parents’ actions and reactions are how you learn about the world, an if your parents don’t react to anything you do, it’s easy to see how things can end up seeming meaningless.”
“Your teenage brain has fewer connections than your childhood one. This is because, while a child’s brain may be forming millions of connections every second, not all these will be useful. A child’s brain is essentially hoarding. However, these superfluous neuronal connections hamper efficiency; the most capable human brains tend to be the most efficient, the most well-connected. A child’s brain is anything but that. Which may explain why they’re often so erratic and easily confused. So, during adolescence, our brains undergo a process called pruning; excess and unnecessary connections (synapses) and neurons are removed, deleted, while the ones you use regularly are retained and reinforced, improving the overall functioning of your brain.”
“During childhood, all the parts of our brain are saying, ‘What is my job, exactly?’ During adolescence, it’s more, ‘I know what my job is, but how am I supposed to do it?’”
“Adolescent maturation brings about changes, increased activity and efficiency in those areas responsible for emotion, pleasure, and happiness. These regions are also responsible for reward anticipation and govern and induce reward-seeking behavior. They make us want things and compel us to get them. As adults, we’re not as beholden to these powerful but primal influences; our rational, impulse-regulating pre-frontal cortex can assess the long-term outcomes of emotion-driven, gratification-seeking behavior and say ‘No, that’s not a good idea,’ so override it. The problem is, during adolescence, the emotional, reward-seeking regions mature faster than the prefrontal regions. For a prolonged period, they have greater influence over our behavior, while the more disciplined parts of our brain are still maturing.”
“A fleeting yet intense emotional burst (‘I hate you, Dad!’) can be more powerful than logic and reason to an adolescent brain. This also explains adolescents’ blase attitude toward risk; their brains are more susceptible to emotional drives, immediate simulation, and gratification, less so to long-term consequences and rational thought.”
“Nostalgia is a very positive process, and can make us more motivated, more social, more optimistic, all things that boost our well-being and happiness. Thinking regularly about your past which was good means you retain an awareness of your own achievements and abilities, and can more easily accept that positive things can and do happen, which just makes you feel better. It seems nostalgia isn’t so much mourning for what you’ve lost, but more appreciating what you’ve achieved.”
