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

Liberals support programs they believe will lead to a better future, such as subsidized education, urban planning, and government-funded technology initiatives. Conservatives prefer programs that protect their current way of life, such as defense spending, law-and-order initiatives, and limits on immigration.

Arousal is sometimes used to describe sexual excitement, but more broadly it’s a measure of how engaged a person is with what’s going on around him. When a person is interested and engaged, his heart beats a little faster, his blood pressure goes up a bit, and small amounts of perspiration are released from his sweat glands. Doctors call this a sympathetic response.

Abstract thinking is one of the primary functions of the dopamine system. Abstract thinking allows us to go beyond sensory observation of events to construct a model that explains why the events are occurring.

A description that relies on the senses focuses on the physical world: things that actually exist. The technical term for this type of thinking is concrete. That’s an H&N function, and scientists call it low-level thinking. Abstract thinking is called high-level.

This ability—one might even call it an unconscious impulse—has been used by Hollywood writers to increase acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. They do it through the power of story. We develop emotional relationships with characters in stories. If it’s a well-written story, the feelings we have for the characters may be very similar to the feelings we have for real people. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) notes, “TV hasn’t merely reflected the changes in social attitudes; it has also had an important role in bringing them about. Time and again, it’s been shown that personally knowing an LGBT person is one of the most influential factors in shifting one’s views on LGBT issues, but in the absence of that, many viewers have first gotten to know us as television characters.”

Pushing a person onto the tracks to stop a train is nearly impossible. Flipping a switch from far away is easier. Similarly, many laws benefit some people but harm others. The farther away you get, the easier it is to tolerate some degree of harm in the service of the greater good. Distance insulates politicians from the immediate consequences of their decisions.

Political campaigns require intense motivation. They require a willingness to sacrifice everything to achieve success. Long hours take a toll on family life in particular. H&N people, who make relationships with loved ones a priority, can’t succeed in politics.

H&N circuits can bring about feelings of satisfaction, feelings that the end has been reached and it’s time to stop. Endorphins, endocannabinoids, and other H&N neurotransmitters tell us that our work is done, and now it’s time to enjoy the fruits of our labor. But dopamine suppresses these chemicals. Dopamine never

Historically, the only way to reverse the expansion of power is to replace incremental change with cataclysmic change in the form of revolution.

it is easier to obtain liberty than it is to preserve it. Rebels are dopaminergic and politicians are dopaminergic. The goal of both is change.

The important thing to remember is that liberals want to help people become better, conservatives want to let people be happy, and politicians want power.

Alleles represent slight variations in the coding of genes that give people different characteristics. People who have a long form of the DRD4 gene, such as the 7R allele, are more likely to take risks. They pursue new experiences because they have a low tolerance for boredom. They like to explore new places, ideas, foods, drugs, and sexual opportunities. They are adventurers. Worldwide about one in five people have the 7R allele, but there’s substantial variation from place to place.

common in far-flung populations? The obvious answer is that dopamine makes people seek out more. It makes them restless and dissatisfied. It makes them long for something better. These

7R allele didn’t set off the migration, but once it began, the allele gave its carriers a survival advantage.

people who carry the 7R allele are faster learners, especially when getting the answer right triggers a reward. In general, 7R carriers are more sensitive to rewards; they have stronger reactions to both wins and losses.

people who were sensitive to stress had a harder time extracting resources from environments that represented a large change from what they were used to. They were less successful hunters and less productive gatherers. That made it hard for them to compete for reproductive mates, and sometimes they didn’t even live long enough to have children who would carry their genes forward to the next generation.

new job, a new city, even a whole new career can be exciting and energizing for people with dopaminergic personalities. They thrive in unfamiliar environments. In prehistoric times, they were more likely to cope well despite radical changes in their way of life.

People with bipolar disorder experience episodes of depression when their mood is abnormally low and episodes of mania when it’s too high. The latter is associated with high levels of dopamine, which shouldn’t be surprising given the symptoms of the manic state: high energy, euphoric mood, racing thoughts that quickly jump from one topic to another, an abundance of activity in pursuit of many goals at once, and excessive involvement in high-risk, pleasure-seeking activities such as unrestrained spending and promiscuous sexual behavior.

Dopamine drives intelligence, creativity, and hard work, but it can also make people behave in bizarre ways.

Cocaine blocks the dopamine transporter like a sock shoved into a vacuum cleaner nozzle. The blockage allows the dopamine to interact with its receptor over and over again. When that happens, people experience increased energy, goal-directed activity, and sexual drive. They have elevated self-esteem, euphoria, and racing thoughts that jump from one topic to another. Cocaine intoxication is so similar to mania that doctors have trouble telling them apart.

people with hyperthymic temperaments are upbeat, exuberant, jocular, overoptimistic, overconfident, boastful, and full of energy and plans. They are versatile with broad interests, overinvolved and meddlesome, uninhibited and risk-taking, and they generally don’t sleep very much. They become overly enthusiastic about new directions in their lives, such as diets, romantic partners, business opportunities, even religions, and then quickly lose interest. They often accomplish a great deal, but they can be difficult to live with.

Many American immigrants came from Europe, a migration that boosted the dopaminergic gene pool in the United States, leaving Europe with a residual population more likely to take an H&N approach to life.1

The world is now characterized by a never-ending flow of information, new products, advertising, and the perceived need for more. Dopamine is now associated with the most essential part of our being. Dopamine has taken over our souls.

The essence of humanity is our ability to move beyond instinct, to go beyond automatic reactions to our environment. It’s the ability to weigh options, to consider higher concepts such as values and principles, and then to make a deliberate choice about how to maximize what we believe is good—whether it’s love, money, or the ennobling of the soul. That’s dopamine.

Whatever it is, it rarely means that our friend is choosing to act like a different person. It generally means that aspects of her behavior that are outside her conscious control are different. And it’s those aspects that we refer to when we think of “herself”—the essence of who she is. We may believe our souls reside in our dopamine circuits, but our friends don’t believe that.

it’s a good illustration of how a person can be disabled by both an excessive focus on the future and an excessive enjoyment of the present.

The modern world drives us to be all dopamine, all the time. Too much dopamine can lead to productive misery, while too much H&N can lead to happy indolence: the workaholic executive versus the pot-smoking basement dweller. Neither one is living a truly happy life or growing as a person. To live a good life, we need to bring them back into balance.

How can the ordinary person find balance? It’s unlikely that any of us will forsake the modern world to live with a clan of tree-worshipers. We have to find balance in other ways. Dopamine alone will never satisfy us. It can’t provide satisfaction any more than a hammer can turn a screw. But it’s constantly promising us that satisfaction is right around the corner: one more donut, one more promotion, one more conquest. How do we get off the treadmill? It’s not easy, but there are ways.

Mastery is the ability to extract the maximum reward from a particular set of circumstances.

When mastery is achieved, dopamine has reached the pinnacle of its aspiration—squeezing every last drop out of an available resource. This is what it’s all about. This is the moment to savor—now, in the present. Mastery is the point at which dopamine bows to H&N. Having done all it can do, dopamine pauses, and allows H&N to have its way with our happiness circuits. Even if it’s only for a short time, dopamine doesn’t fight the feeling of contentment. It approves. The best basking is basking in a job well done.

Mastery also creates a feeling of what psychologists call an internal locus of control. This phrase refers to the tendency to view one’s choices and experiences as being under one’s own control as opposed to being determined by fate, luck, or other people. It’s a good feeling. Most people don’t like being at the mercy of forces beyond their control.

Pilots say that when they’re flying in bad weather, it’s less stressful to be at the controls than to sit in the cabin. It’s the same with driving in a snowstorm. Most people would rather ...

In addition to making people feel good, an internal locus of control also makes people more effective. People with a strong sense of internal locus of control are more likely to a...

it takes an enormous amount of time and effort as well as constant mental stretching. Mastering a skill requires a student to constantly move outside her comfort zone. As soon as a piano player gets good at an easy song, she has to start on a harder one. It’s a tough slog, but it can also be a great joy. Those who don’t give up generally feel it was worth it. It can result in a feeling that they have found their passion, something so engrossing they become completely immersed in it.

Paying attention to reality, to what you are actually doing in the moment, maximizes the flow of information into your brain. It maximizes dopamine’s ability to make new plans, because to build models that will accurately predict the future, dopamine needs data, and data flows from the senses. That’s dopamine and H&N working together.

When something interesting activates the dopamine system, we snap to attention. If we are able to activate our H&N system by shifting our focus outward, the increased level of attention makes the sensory experience more intense.

In spite of what technology addicts may believe, multitasking, or paying attention to more than one thing at a time, is impossible. When you attempt to do more than one thing, such as talking on the telephone while reading an email, you shift your attention between the tasks, and end up compromising on both. Sometimes you pause while reading the email to listen to the person on the phone; other times you stop listening as you focus on the email. The person you’re talking to can tell. You’re obviously not giving him your full attention, and you miss important details. Instead of increasing your efficiency, “multitasking” decreases it.

You also make more mistakes when you try to multitask. Interruptions of only a few seconds, the amount of time it takes to switch to your email program and back, can double the number of errors you make on a task that requires concentration. It’s not just the distraction that causes the mistakes; switching back and forth consumes mental energy, and fatigue makes it harder to concentrate. Still, people do it, especially people who work with computers.

call stimulus-independent thought, was the brain’s default mode. When they looked at happiness, they found that people were less happy when their mind was wandering, and once again, it didn’t matter what the activity was. Whether they were eating, working, watching TV, or socializing, they were happier if they were paying attention to what they were doing. They researchers concluded that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

spending time in the present, we take in sensory information about the reality we live in, allowing the dopamine system to use that information to develop reward-maximizing plans. The impressions that we absorb have the potential to inspire a flurry of new ideas, enhancing our ability to find new solutions to the problems we face. And that’s a wonderful thing. Creating something new, something that has never been conceived of before is, by definition, surprising. Because it is always new, creation is the most durable of the dopaminergic pleasures.

Creativity is an excellent way to mix together dopamine and H&N.

Woodworking, knitting, painting, decorating, and sewing are old-fashioned activities that don’t get much attention in our modern world—which is exactly the point. These activities don’t require smartphone apps or high-speed internet. They require brains and hands working together to create something new. Our imagination conceives the project. We develop a plan to carry it out. Then our hands make it real.

Fixing things also boosts self-efficacy and increases one’s sense of control: H&N delivering dopaminergic gratification.

Cooking, gardening, and playing sports are among many activities that combine intellectual stimulation with physical activity in a way that will satisfy us and make us whole. These activities can be pursued for a lifetime without becoming stale.

Creativity is different because it stirs together H&N with dopamine. It’s like mixing little bit of carbon with iron to make steel. The result is stronger and more durable. That’s what happens to dopaminergic pleasure when you add physical H&N.

Affiliative relationships in the context of the work environment played a key role: work and friendship, dopamine and H&N.

“I’m excited about my work and projects,” a dopaminergic reason. The authors of the report also noted that the construction industry had enjoyed strong growth in the previous year, and this growth was reflected in rising salaries, another dopaminergic contribution. It takes both dopamine and H&N to attain happiness, the state of being that the philosopher Aristotle considered to be the goal of all other goals.

we aim to be great, we will probably have to accept the fact that misery will be a part of it. It’s the goad of dissatisfaction that keeps us at our work while others are enjoying the company of family and friends. But those of us who prefer a life of happy fulfillment have a different task to accomplish: the task of finding harmony. We have to overcome the seduction of endless dopaminergic stimulation and turn our backs on our never-ending hunger for more. If we are able to intermingle dopamine with H&N, we can achieve that harmony. All dopamine all the time is not the path to the best possible future. It’s sensory reality and abstract thought working together that unlocks the brain’s full potential. Operating at its peak performance, it becomes capable of producing not only happiness and satisfaction, not only wealth and knowledge, but a rich mixture of sensory experience and wise understanding, a mixture that can set us down the path toward a more balanced way of being human.