Joy, evolution and the negativity bias
Part 3
“Research has shown that human beings have a survival-related negativity bias, which practically means more brain activity and energy are dedicated to registering and responding to negative experiences and anticipating what might go wrong than to the positive in our lives. And this is too often reinforced by an outer world, which constantly reminds us of the ways that we come up short, or all the reasons to feel threatened…” (From previous post August 6th, 2020)
As I mentioned in the previous post, today’s piece will focus on Rick Hanson’s book, Hardwiring Happiness. I’ve also included a few photos of my walks in nature and links of animations by Dr Russ Harris. In particular I’ll be focusing on the first part of the book, which discusses the ways we are wired as human mammals, the role our brains and autonomic nervous systems play in happiness, how we have evolved a negativity bias, which helped our cave ancestors survive, but can often become problematic in our complex, contemporary societies. The second part of this book, which I will summarily present in the fourth part on happiness, focuses on ways to train our brains, through neuroplasticity, to rest in the “green zone” more often rather than the reactive “red zone”, and how to turn positive states to more lasting traits.
Most people would at least theoretically agree that how we feel and do in all areas of our life is basically determined by a) the socioeconomic and cultural contexts we find ourselves in and the challenges each one of us faces, b) our temperaments, vulnerabilities and weaknesses and the ways that these circumstances and challenges might grind on them, and c) the inner strengths we have that can help us meet our challenges and protect our vulnerabilities. These inner strengths are not fleeting mental states, but more stable traits and an enduring source of well-being, which we all need to navigate the difficulties of life. Some of the strengths mentioned in the book are a positive mood, common sense, integrity, inner peace, calm, contentment, determination, a warm heart, self-compassion, secure attachment, emotional intelligence, learned optimism, the relaxation response, self-esteem, distress tolerance, self-regulation, resilience, empathy, and other qualities. The book focuses on the third factor, our inner strengths and how we can enhance and develop these to facilitate our well-being. Dr Rick Hanson refers to research that suggests that on average, about a third of a person’s strengths are innate, built into his or her genetically based temperament, talents, mood, and personality, and the other two-thirds are developed over time, which means there is room for us to potentially enhance our strengths and develop new ones.
The first part of the book is informed by neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, both of which help us understand how we are designed and how we can learn to shape our brains for the best. Summarily, the human brain is designed to learn and change by our experiences. Whatever we repeatedly experience, sense, feel, desire and think slowly sculpts our neural structure for better or worse. Rick Hanson writes: “As we go about living and learning fast, complex, and dynamic neural activity is continually changing our brain. Active synapses become more sensitive, new synapses start growing within minutes, busy regions get more blood since they need more oxygen and glucose to do their work, and genes inside neurons turn on or off.” He explains that our experiences don’t just grow new synapses, but also reach down into our genes, into little strips of atoms in the twisted molecules of DNA inside the nuclei of neurons and change how they operate. For instance, if one routinely practices relaxation, this will increase the activity of genes that calm down stress reactions. Meanwhile, less active connections wither away in a process sometimes called neural Darwinism: the survival of the busiest. He writes: “All mental activity— sights and sounds, thoughts and feelings, conscious and unconscious processes— is based on underlying neural activity. Much mental and therefore neural activity flows through the brain like ripples on a river, with no lasting effects on its channel. But intense, prolonged, or repeated mental / neural activity— especially if it is conscious— will leave an enduring imprint in neural structure, like a surging current reshaping a riverbed. As they say in neuroscience: Neurons that fire together wire together. Mental states become neural traits.”
This process of shaping our brain through experience is called experience-dependent neuroplasticity. Rick Hanson refers to a well known study involving London taxi drivers that demonstrated how certain learning experiences thickened neural layers in their hippocampus, and also, to research that has shown that mindfulness meditators have increased gray matter, which means a thicker cortex in three key regions: the prefrontal areas behind the forehead that control attention; the insula, which we use for tuning into ourselves and others; and the hippocampus.
I referred to these findings in an older post, Misconceptions and the Possibility of Change – 15/10/2021. An extract from that post:
“We also now know that neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s capacity to transform itself physically, continues throughout our lifespan and does not become fixed after adolescence as was previously thought. This allows for changes to take place throughout our lifespan. Paul Bach-y-Rita’s early research showed that in cases of brain injury or loss of capacities the brain has the potential to re-organise itself. It has since been found that the brain is capable of massive rewiring in response to trauma, disease and new learning. Another well known study conducted by neuroscientist, Eleanor Mcguire, that measured the gray matter of London taxi drivers before and after their license exams found that their hippocampus had grown significantly after learning to navigate through the thousands of winding streets in London. Scientists have also found that we can cultivate desirable traits. Similarly, meditative practices have been found to create changes in the brain. Sara Lazar, psychiatry professor and researcher, measured the brain cell volume of the amygdala of people before and after a two-month mindfulness meditation course and found that it had decreased in size, which correlated with the participants’ reports of experiencing less stress (15/10/2021).”
The process of experience-dependent neuroplasticity is the mind’s ability to change brain function and alter brain structure in potentially beneficial ways and it shows that each one of us has some power to change our brain for the better through new learning, changing some of our beliefs and behaviours or habits, and working with our mind. Rick Hanson says that if we don’t make use of this power ourself, other forces will shape our brain for us, including pressures at work and home, technology and media, pushy people, the lingering effects of painful past experiences…. He suggests we use the power of self-directed neuroplasticity to build up a lasting sense of ease, confidence, self-acceptance, kindness, feeling loved, contentment, and inner peace, and through the practices in his book we can turn everyday good experiences into good neural structure. In other words, we can learn to activate mental states and then install them as neural traits. We’ll be using our mind to change our brain to change our mind for the better. Bit by bit, synapse by synapse, we can build more happiness into our brain, overcoming its negativity bias.
The negativity bias:
Our brain acquired its structure, capabilities and tendencies over hundreds of millions of years, and all this shows up in our experience today. As humans we share common ancestors with the very first microorganisms all the way down to homo-sapiens. Rick Hanson writes: “Over the last 600 million years, solutions to survival problems faced by creatures ranging from jellyfish and clams to lizards, mice, monkeys, and early humans have gotten built into the evolving nervous system. The brain has roughly tripled in volume over the past several million years, while being carved by the intense pressures of natural selection.” To pass on their genes, our reptilian, mammalian, primate, hominid, and human ancestors had to acquire things that were positive, such as shelter, food and sex, which we could call “carrots”, and stay away from things such as predators, starvation, and aggression from others of their species – “sticks”. From a survival standpoint, sticks have more urgency and impact than carrots. Over hundreds of millions of years, it was literally a matter of life and death to pay extra attention to sticks, react to them intensely, remember them well, and over time become even more sensitive to them. As a result, the brain evolved a built-in negativity bias. And while this bias emerged in harsh settings very different from our own, it continues to operate inside us today as we go about our lives, at home, at work, at school, in the street, online, and so on.
Consequently, our brain has evolved over a very long time to be good at learning from bad experiences, but not as good at learning from good ones. It is always on the lookout for potential dangers and losses, which Rick Hanson comments is why “news programs typically start their shows with the latest murder or disaster. As they say in journalism: If it bleeds, it leads.” Alain de Botton’s discussion and analysis of the News is very interesting with quite a few useful insights at an age where we are flooded by a plethora of news items while we often don’t have the time or background knowledge to digest, filter, evaluate and make meaning of. He writes: “Always remember that the news is always trying to make you scared. It’s bad for us, but very good for news organisations: the easiest way to get an audience is through frightening people….” and “Properly told, stories are able to operate on two levels. On the surface, they deal with particulars involving a range of facts related to a given time and place, a local culture and a social group–and it is these specifics that tend to bore us whenever they lie outside of our own experience. But then, a layer beneath the particulars, the universals are hidden: the psychological, social and political themes that transcend the stories’ temporal and geographical settings and are founded on unvarying fundamentals of human nature (The News: A User’s Manual).”
To come back to evolution, animals that were more on the lookout for dangers were more likely to pass on their genes, and these inclinations are now woven into our DNA. Rick Hanson writes that even “when you feel relaxed and happy and connected, your brain keeps scanning for potential dangers, disappointments, and interpersonal issues. Consequently, in the back of your mind, there’s usually a subtle but noticeable sense of unease, dissatisfaction, and separation to motivate this vigilance. Then when the least little thing goes wrong or could be trouble, the brain zooms in on it with a kind of tunnel vision that downplays everything else…… Negative stimuli are perceived more rapidly and easily than positive stimuli. Our brain responds more intensely to unpleasant things than to equally intense pleasant ones. We recognize angry faces more quickly than happy ones; in fact, the brain will react even without your conscious awareness when another person’s face is angry.” In the book there are references to research findings and other sources that suggest that we tend to do more to avert a loss than to acquire an equivalent gain; lasting intimate relationships usually need at least five positive interactions to balance every negative one and we begin to thrive when positive moments outnumber negative ones by at least a three-to-one ratio, and ideally higher; and finally, the negative contaminates positive more than the positive purifies negative.
This central circuit of over-reactivity has three parts: the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the hippocampus. Rick Hanson claims that although our amygdala responds to positive events and feelings, it is mostly activated by negative ones. Other people’s anger activates our amygdala somewhat like a charging lion would have a million years ago. The amygdala sends alarm signals to the hypothalamus and to the sympathetic nervous system control centers in the brain stem to begin a fight-or-flight response. The hypothalamus sends out an urgent call for adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine, and other stress hormones, the heart beats faster, thoughts speed up, and we begin to feel rattled or upset. Meanwhile the hippocampus has formed an initial neural trace of the experience and then guided its consolidation in cortical memory networks so we can learn from it later. Rick Hanson writes that over time, negative experiences make the amygdala even more sensitive to the negative because the cortisol that the amygdala signals the hypothalamus to call for enters the bloodstream and flows into your brain, where it stimulates and strengthens the amygdala. Additionally, there are even regions in the amygdala specifically designed to prevent the unlearning of fear, especially from childhood experiences.
As a result, Rick Hanson claims “we end up preoccupied by threats that are actually smaller or more manageable than we’d feared, while overlooking opportunities that are actually greater than we’d hoped for. In effect, we’ve got a brain that’s prone to “paper tiger paranoia.” And of course, these biologically based tendencies are intensified by factors, such as, our temperament, our personal histories, traumas and circumstances. He writes: “If you grew up in a dangerous neighborhood, had angry or unpredictable parents, or were bullied in school, it’s normal to still be watchful even if you now live in a safe place with nice people. Your current situations make a difference, too. Perhaps you live with someone who can fly off the handle without cause or you’re being harassed at work. The economy plays a role as well. Understandably, people feel unsettled or worse when money is tight and daily life is racing and pressured. And throughout history, political groups have played on fears to gain or hold on to power.”
The negativity bias also affects the structure-building processes of our brain because what flows through our mind changes our brain. The result is two kinds of learning, two kinds of memory: explicit and implicit. Briefly, explicit memory has all our personal recollections, which tend to be positively biased the farther back in time we go. Explicit memory also includes “declarative knowledge,” which is a kind of encyclopedia of information. Implicit memory includes “procedural knowledge,” which is how to do things, our assumptions and expectations, emotional residues of lived experience, models of relationships, values and inclinations, and the whole inner atmosphere of our mind. Rick Hanson writes: “It’s like a vast storehouse holding most of our inner strengths as well as most of our feelings of inadequacy, unfulfilled longings, defensiveness, and old pain. What gets put into this storehouse is the foundation of how you feel and function. Its contents usually have much more impact on your life than the contents of your explicit memory. Unfortunately, the formation of implicit memory is negatively biased.”
To conclude, the negativity bias is tilted toward immediate survival, but against quality of life, peaceful and fulfilling relationships, and lasting well-being. Tilting toward the positive simply levels the playing field. The best way to compensate for the negativity bias is to regularly take in the good because as Rick Hanson says taking in the good decreases negative feelings, thoughts, and actions and increases positive ones.
As I mentioned, the next post will focus on ways to take in the good and tilt our experience towards the positive.
Photos
A few photos of my walks in nature because nature often brings me a little joy and wonder
Links
Αnimations by Dr Russ Harris that explore the observing self, that part of our mind that we use for awareness, attention and focus; the three happiness myths, the need to embrace all our emotions and the hyper-pathologising of life experiences; the evolution of the human mind; and a chessboard metaphor for the internal struggles we have with our feelings and thoughts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBPPr1hsbMM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93LFNtcR1Ok
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv6HkipQcfA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phbzSNsY8vc