The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

by Daniel Z. Lieberman

Dopaminergic excitement (that is, the thrill of anticipation) doesn’t last forever, because eventually the future becomes the present. The thrilling mystery of the unknown becomes the boring familiarity of the everyday, at which point dopamine’s job is done, and the letdown sets in.

Human beings who have genes that produce high levels of dopamine have the highest number of sexual partners and the lowest age of first sexual intercourse.

We enjoy the familiar not for what it could become, but for what it is. That is the only stable basis for a long-term, satisfying relationship.

Dopamine pursues more, not morality; to dopamine, force and fraud are nothing more than tools.

But when we need to resist harmful urges, willpower is the tool we reach for first. As it turns out, that might not be such a good idea.

Willpower is like a muscle. It becomes fatigued with use, and after a fairly short period of time, it gives out.

He became convinced that more than a dozen people he knew were HIV positive, and that they were all counting on him to travel to Africa to find a cure. He figured this out because the voices of his dead grandmother and God were explaining things to him.

He decided his parents were imposters, and he left the country to look for his real parents.

There’s wide variation in how much salience different people attach to different things. Everyone has a lower limit, though. We have to categorize some things as having low salience, being unimportant, so we can ignore them for the simple reason that noticing every detail in the world around us would be overwhelming.