The Village Effect Quotes

“Few see looking after others as therapeutic for the person who does the caretaking, or consider community involvement as therapeutic as drugs. Yet there is mounting evidence that a rich network of face-to-face relationships creates a biological force field against disease.”
― Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter

“Yet research shows that skill in reading, writing, and arithmetic, academic standing in high school, scores on college entrance tests and much more besides, are linked to sitting down to family dinner. The more meals you eat with your child, the larger the child’s vocabulary and the higher his or her grades, an effect that is exaggerated in girls. From”
― Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: Why Face-to-face Contact Matters

“In fact, neglecting to keep in close contact with people who are important to you is at least as dangerous to your health as a pack-a-day cigarette habit, hypertension, or obesity.4”
― Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: Why Face-to-face Contact Matters

“For two-thirds of the twentieth century the parental zeitgeist was to deny babies and children any physical or emotional comfort. To make them grow up. Fast.”
― Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: Why Face-to-face Contact Matters

“depending on how much nectar it’s found and how much help it has already recruited, a foraging honeybee flies back to the hive and communicates a status update by waggling figure eights on the walls. These torso wags map the exact location of a food source in relation to the sun, as well as its precise distance from the hive. If there are not enough bees outside the hive to exploit the find, the forager bee adds flourishes such as grabbing a hive mate from above and shaking him all over. Not enough workers in-house to process the flood of incoming nectar? The bee will tremble while moving through the hive “with forelegs held aloft like Saint Vitus dancers,” write the entomologists. Signaling”
― Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: Why Face-to-face Contact Matters

“live interaction sparks far greater activity in the brain regions linked to social cognition and reward”
― Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: Why Face-to-face Contact Matters

“An infant’s scent seems to flip certain neural switches in the parents. The mother’s sense of smell gets completely rewired during pregnancy, so that the scent of her own infant becomes incredibly alluring. In the meantime, though, because the olfactory infrastructure is being overhauled, other wonderful aromas may smell disgusting. When”
― Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: Why Face-to-face Contact Matters