The mammal brain evolved to seek safety in numbers. We humans like our independence, of course. We hate to be “one of the herd.” But our mammal brain sees isolation as a survival threat. The result is a constant dilemma: a bad feeling when with a herd, and a bad feeling without one.
The chemical oxytocin causes the good feeling of safety around others. It’s the feeling we call “trust.” Social trust promotes survival in the state of nature, so your brain rewards you with a good feeling when you find it. Of course, trusting every critter you meet does not promote survival. The mammal brain evolved to make careful decisions about when to trust and when not to trust. It would be nice to enjoy the cozy feeling of oxytocin all the time but your brain only releases it when trusting looks safe.
In the animal world, oxytocin is stimulated by the constant physical presence of a herd or pack or troop. More of it is stimulated by extra contact with trusted individuals. Oxytocin builds neural pathways that tell a mammal who to trust in the future. The pleasure of company has a down side, alas, because conflict erupts when mammals gather. An individual might long for some distance from the group, but predators quickly kill an isolated mammal in the state of nature. Mammals evolved a brain that surges with cortisol when oxytocin dips. This motivates a mammal to seek the safety of social bonds despite the conflict.
For most of human history, people stuck with a tribe and a family for life. They spent their waking lives conforming to the expectations of their group. The thought of living without that group seemed so life-threatening that most people did what it took to sustain the bond. They rarely “did their own thing.” Today, you can survive without such bonds. You can trust “the system” to meet survival needs that a tribe or family would have met in the past. When conflict frustrates you, you can risk breaking social bonds and seeking new ones.
But social trust is harder to build than you might expect when you leave the world of your myelinated oxytocin circuits. The quest for social trust often comes with disappointments. Cynicism is a convenient way to relieve this bad feeling. It stimulates the nice “we’re all in this together” feeling without the frustrations of living with an actual herd. Cynicism triggers the good feeling that all the good guys are “with you” without the complications of having them actually with you. You might like your privacy, but when you are too isolated, your mammal brain sends out threat signals. If you respond to the threatened feeling by saying, “We’re all going to hell in a handbasket,” it feels like everyone is in that handbasket with you.
But you pay a price for putting your trust in the cynical herd. You feel threatened whenever your herd feels threatened. And you risk being banished from the herd if you fail to conform to one of its cynical views. Banishment is a survival threat to your inner mammal. To relieve the survival threat and sustain your oxytocin, it seems necessary to run with the latest ideas of the cynical herd. You can justify your cynicism with data and “principles.” It all feels true when you’re surrounded by people focused on the same data and principles. No one imagines themselves being cynical just to enjoy the safety of the herd. But social trust is hard to build, so anything that triggers oxytocin is appealing.
Reptiles only produce oxytocin during sex, which motivates them to tolerate the physical proximity of another reptile momentarily. The rest of the time, without the calming power of oxytocin, reptiles can’t stand each other. They leave home the instant they’re born, and if they don’t leave fast enough, a parent recycles them instead of letting a predator get the energy. Most baby reptiles die before they reproduce, but a species survives because parents make babies in quantity.
Mammals can’t do that. A warm-blooded baby is so hard to produce that a mamma mammal can only make a relative few in her lifetime. Her genes are annihilated if predators eat those few babies. We are not descended from individuals whose genes were annihilated. We are descended from individuals who found a way to protect their young constantly. Oxytocin stimulates that protection. Brains that produced a lot of oxytocin had higher survival rates, and natural selection built a brain that makes a lot of oxytocin.
Childbirth begins with an oxytocin surge. The fetus receives it through the blood, so we are born high on oxytocin. We are born ready to trust, with mothers primed to trust us. But the surge is soon metabolized and we have to do more to get more. Mamma mammals lick or cuddle their babies, and that stimulates this chemical in both parties.
Humans complicate the oxytocin feeling with words like “love,” “compassion,” and “empathy,” but let’s take a more practical look at it. It takes twenty-two months to gestate a baby elephant. A lion can kill it in a second. A lone elephant cannot protect a baby, but a circle of adults can. Elephants would be wiped out as a species unless they maintained groups that are ready to circle around threatened young ones. Eternal vigilance is the price of survival in the state of nature and oxytocin makes the vigilance feel good. A mamma mammal gets a good feeling when her child is close, and a baby mammal gets a good feeling when its mother is close. Each herd-mate enjoys oxytocin when they stay close.
That said, mammals can’t spend all their time cuddling. A mamma mammal needs to get a huge amount of food to sustain her production of milk so that she can feed her baby. A young mammal needs to explore to develop its brain. Mammals often separate and their oxytocin falls when this happens. The bad feeling motivates them to renew contact. The reciprocal nature of attachment is the key. A baby mammal scans for its mother and the mother scans for the child, and that improves the odds of survival. A young mammal that loses its mother typically dies, despite all the heartwarming animal adoption stories. Attachment is a matter of life and death, and oxytocin makes that attachment feel good.
You may have heard that oxytocin is the chemical that induces labor contractions and triggers the production of breast milk. Its broader role is to relax a mammal in the presence of others. Relaxing with just anyone would not promote survival so the mammal brain is particular about when it releases the oxytocin. It responds to the smells, sights, and sounds associated with past oxytocin experiences. When the trust chemical is not triggered, a mammal does not trust. It is on high alert. Oxytocin did not evolve for mammals to trust constantly, but to make fine distinctions that promote survival.
Oxytocin paves neural pathways that wire a young mammal to trust everything it experiences while its oxytocin is flowing. Thus a baby effortlessly transfers its attachment from its mother to everything encountered while it was with its mother. It feels safe away from its mother’s side because its herd-mates trigger its oxytocin instead. A baby mammal cannot understand the threats that surround it, but it learns from experience. It gets a bad feeling if it wanders too far, as hunger grows and oxytocin levels fall. A mother may even bite a wandering child to build the association between isolation and pain.
Trusting just anyone does not promote survival. The mammal brain evolved to make distinctions.
Attachment to a group promotes survival because a herd is an extended predator-detection system. All those eyes and ears reduce risk sharply. This only works if a mammal runs when its group-mates run. We humans might think, “I’m not running until I see the lion for myself.” But a gazelle who did that would not survive. Individuals who respected the judgment of those around them were more likely to survive. We are descended from them.
Following the crowd works for predators, too. Wolves, hyenas, and lions often hunt in groups because they get more food when they do so. Life in these groups can be frustrating because stronger members dominate food and mating opportunities, but pack-mates stimulate each other’s oxytocin, too. The “bonding hormone” makes it possible for violent mammals to live together.
Attachments have a price. A mammal often has to choose between its social needs and its other survival needs. Imagine a hungry gazelle eyeing a delicious patch of green grass. Her dopamine is triggered and she wants to go for it. But the green patch is dangerously far from the rest of the herd. That triggers her cortisol, so she looks elsewhere. She sees a closer green patch, but it’s full of bigger, stronger herd-mates. The last time she got too close to them, she got a painful kick. The thought of approaching them triggers her cortisol, so she looks elsewhere. She sees a patch of brown grass. It doesn’t look very rewarding so it triggers only a bit of dopamine. Before a gazelle takes one bite, she analyzes this cost-benefit matrix. Finally she eats, but then the herd shifts and she has to analyze her choices all over again.
Difficult trade-offs between dopamine, oxytocin, and cortisol are part of a mammal’s daily life. The gazelle doesn’t expect a dopamine/oxytocin high all the time. She doesn’t think something is wrong with the world when she has to choose. She just scans for her best next step. The mammal brain keeps anticipating the neurochemical consequences of stepping in one direction or another.
Primates use their bigger brains to weigh even more consequences. They are more able to build new circuits, which enables them to break old attachments and form new ones. Primates can leave their troop at puberty and bond with a new troop. They can form cliques within their troop, and switch from one clique to another. They build new expectations about old troop-mates when things change. A primate builds oxytocin circuits in youth, and keeps adjusting them.
Primates have a special way to stimulate oxytocin through the activity we call “grooming.” You have probably seen images of monkeys and apes picking bugs out of each other’s fur. You may have thought, “Why can’t people be so nice?” We don’t want our neighbors plucking bugs from our fur, but we long for the sense of mutual trust that grooming seems to embody. However, a monkey’s life is fraught with difficult decisions about who to groom. Their expectations of reciprocity are sometimes disappointed, so they end up with cortisol instead of oxytocin. Fortunately, the primate brain evolved to make just such decisions.
Imagine a foraging group of female chimpanzees finding a tree bearing delicious fruit. The high-status ladies command the good spots around it. One lady doesn’t fit, and she knows that her troop-mates will bite her if she intrudes on their space. She finds a less-desirable spot with less abundant fruit and more predator exposure. If she strays too far from the group, neighboring chimps may attack or kidnap her. Her cortisol surges when she reaches the limits of safety, so she returns to the comfort of oxytocin. Sometimes she goes hungry, but she survives to eat tomorrow. One day, she takes the initiative to groom the fur of the ladies that exclude her. Gradually, she may be accepted into their trust circle. Grooming the fur of troop-mates that just threatened your survival is not very rewarding, but anticipating their acceptance is rewarding. Behaviors that promote survival, no matter what they are, feel good thanks to oxytocin and dopamine.
Primates get on each other’s nerves at times. When that do-something feeling is triggered, grooming gives them something to do. Stimulating oxytocin helps primates sustain the social trust they need to survive despite the inevitable friction.
Physical proximity builds trust because it builds oxytocin circuits. If you’re physically near another mammal and they don’t harm you, an expectation of trust slowly builds. (Think about college roommates bonding in this way.) But misplaced trust threatens survival. Many chimpanzees are missing fingers and toes because they let the wrong ape get too close. Relaxing when a monkey or ape gets close enough to groom your fur is a huge act of trust. Oxytocin is stimulated by touch because in the state of nature trust and touch go together.
Someone who’s close to you can harm you faster than someone at a distance, which means that your quest for oxytocin could easily lead you to harm. The mammal brain evolved a way to avoid trusting those who are not trustworthy. It releases a huge surge of cortisol when trust is betrayed. The cortisol paves a new pathway that disrupts the oxytocin pathway. Thus, you remember when someone close betrays you.
Humans define betrayal in abstract ways. In the animal world, it’s all concrete. For example, when baboons hear the alarm call of one of their grooming partners, they typically rush to defend them. They risk their lives defending allies and expect the same in return. If your grooming partner doesn’t come to your defense when you call, the betrayal is life-threatening. Your cortisol surges, and your expectations about that individual change. You may stop risking your life for them, and start grooming new allies. Neurochemical ups and downs thus prompt behaviors that promote a baboon’s survival. No abstract theories about betrayal are needed.
Mammals are always making difficult decisions about trust. A lioness may trust a lion who has eaten her cubs. A gazelle may trust the alarm calls of herd-mates who give false alarms. They are always choosing between the oxytocin of trust and the cortisol of real threats.
Imagine a classmate who makes an effort to build trust with you, and then expects to copy from you during a test. You may feel betrayed. They may feel betrayed. We build expectations about our social alliances, but others don’t always meet our expectations. Each brain learns from experience. We want to trust because it feels good and helps us meet our survival needs. But we want to avoid betrayed trust because it rings our internal threat alarm. The decision to invest in a social alliance is not easy. After a few disappointments, you may say “Who can you trust these days?” It’s not surprising that the cynicism habit is easy to start and hard to stop.
People are often surprised to find themselves trusting a stranger on a plane. Your expectations are low, so there’s less risk of feeling betrayed. You can end up enjoying a nice flow of oxytocin. When the flight is over, you may not see that person again. Your brain will seek other ways to stimulate oxytocin.
Isolated moments of trust do not protect a mammal as much as reliable long-term trust. For example, sex (which I’ll discuss in more detail later in this chapter) triggers a lot of oxytocin. It’s a big boost of trust for a small amount of time. The oxytocin is soon metabolized and the good feeling is gone unless you trigger it again. Your brain prefers alliances that are always there. But that can burden you with conflicts and constraints, so your brain keeps looking for ways to get oxytocin without cortisol.
Concerts and spectator sports trigger oxytocin. You’re surrounded by thousands of people who are there to experience the same thing as you. You trust them enough to act on your impulses during the concert or game. The bond feels real because your impulses must be withheld so much in daily life. But when the event is over, the people in the crowd will not help you survive. The nice herd feeling was just a spurt of oxytocin. Your brain would like to have that feeling all the time, but it does not like the frustrations of life in a big herd. Your inner mammal keeps trying to trigger good feelings without triggering bad feelings.
We value personal bonds because a virtual herd may not be there when you need it. Such bonds are hard to build, however, and can vanish in an instant of betrayal. So in our quest for safe ways to enjoy oxytocin, attachments to large herds of strangers can be enticing. Cynicism is one way to trigger the good feeling of safety in numbers. When you discuss “the crisis of our times,” you sense that you are part of a huge social alliance, whether you conduct that discussion online, in person, or just in your mind. It’s not surprising that new technologies are so quickly used in ways that build virtual herds. They help us get the oxytocin without the obligations of one-to-one trust bonds. People you know can disappoint you, but people in the handbasket always seem to be there.
Cynicism is a convenient way to gain acceptance into a huge trust network. When you curse “these terrible times” or “this terrible system,” the herd can recognize you as one of them. You are not consciously seeking safety in numbers. Your verbal brain marshals strong evidence for your conclusions, which keeps your conscious mind busy while you enjoy the oxytocin.
A mammal that sticks its head up when the rest of the herd has its head down suffers a real survival risk. Natural selection built a brain that knows when to keep its head down. You may get annoyed by herd behavior in others without recognizing that you are a mammal, too.
Once a particular herd helps you feel safe, any perceived threat to that herd feels like a threat to yourself. Even remote threats to your social alliance can trigger cortisol spikes that take you by surprise.
A mammal that sticks its head up when the rest of the herd has its head down suffers a real survival risk. Natural selection built a brain that knows when to keep its head down.
For most of human history, it was so dangerous to leave your trust circle that people stayed, despite internal conflicts that would horrify us today. For example, humans throughout history have tolerated physical violence and bodily mutilation at the hands of their group-mates because it felt much safer than the thought of leaving the group. The world is now safe enough for you to take the next bus out of town and bond elsewhere. But that doesn’t always feel as good as you might expect. New oxytocin circuits don’t build as easily in adulthood as they did when your myelin was high and your ability to meet your own needs was low. The new community of trust you’re looking for may not appear. Even when you succeed at building new trust bonds, conflicts erupt. Your expectations get disappointed and you feel betrayed. You may think of taking the next bus that leaves the station because that is within the realm of your experience.
Mammals evolved to build social attachments in youth. In the modern world, we often break our early attachments and expect to build new ones. But new oxytocin circuits are more fragile than the ones built through extensive contact during your myelin years. We can’t always replace the old herd with a new one. That’s why we often end up feeling threatened like a mammal without a herd. Our verbal brain makes sense of this feeling by concluding that something is wrong with the world.
Oxytocin boosters are highly prized for this reason. Something as trivial as picking bugs out of another primate’s fur feels important because oxytocin makes the world look alright. The modern world offers us a wide range of oxytocin boosters. Shared tastes in music, food, and sports are popular examples. Discussing the details of shared interests triggers a bit of oxytocin, and when it’s metabolized you can discuss those details some more. Rock collectors talk to other rock collectors and geologists talk to other geologists. The social connection tells your brain that you are promoting your survival, even if no immediate survival task is on the agenda.
Discussing politics is another way to build social trust. Political topics tap into the deep mammalian urge for protection from threat. Life experience leads us to different expectations about how to avoid harm, but whatever your political views, you more easily trust those who share them. That trust helps alliances build more easily, which feels like a great survival boost. In a world of ephemeral social alliances, politics is a convenient way to stimulate oxytocin.
In the state of nature, mammals with stronger social alliances end up with more territory, more food, and more surviving offspring. In the modern world, strong social alliances promote survival in many ways. They can help you get a job or a date or bail you out of trouble. Your brain rewards you with a good feeling when you do things that strengthen social bonds because it promotes your survival.
Once you enjoy the good feeling of community, every little setback to your community can feel like a survival threat. The individual who does not move where the herd moves may seem like a survival threat. Sometimes that person is you. Your distancing is likely to attract predators that threaten the whole group. We mammals risk being excluded from the herd if we don’t follow along. This risk is urgent from the mammal brain’s perspective, so it typically does what it takes to sustain the bond. You can tell yourself you did it for your own reasons instead of recognizing your mammalian urge to sustain your oxytocin.
Animals make clear distinctions between their in-group and outsiders. The smell of a group-mate stimulates oxytocin while outsiders do not. If an animal approaches a group they do not belong to, they are likely to get attacked because the brain circuits of the other animals define the outsider as a threat. (Such defensiveness protects a group’s offspring from the risk of too many animals feeding on the same turf.) An animal can get killed by its own group-mates unless it communicates its in-group status quickly. Each species has smells, markings, and noises that identify it. For example, some gazelles have a black stripe on their rump, some have a white stripe, some have two white stripes, others have one black and one white. These distictions are easily visible when a gazelle follows behind another. Human groups also develop fast ways to communicate in-group status. These communications may be serious or absurd, but the message is clear nonetheless. In the TV comedy show Portlandia, for example, a newcomer is told which piercings are right for Portland, and which piercings would mark her as an outsider.
Humans work hard to restrain their herd impulses even as they indulge them. People who say they love all of humanity tend to form exclusive in-groups with others who proclaim love for all humanity. Some people profess disdain for in-groups, and then they cluster with others who profess that disdain. Some people say, “We are bad,” and only trust others who say, “We are bad.” The urge to form circles of trust is pervasive in humans, even though it can be expressed in many different ways.
Small-brained mammals make very simple in-group/outsider distinctions. Primates complicate things with their extra neurons. A primate troop has many subgroups whose membership is fluid, and each primate continually works at building alliances that promote their own survival. As a result, old groups splinter and new groups form. A primate can find itself threatened by its own former mates, but that individual survives and perhaps thrives because it keeps grooming new allies, as well as old ones.
Humans are busy coalition-builders, too. We often feel threatened by the coalition-building of others. Even when you know they won’t bite and kick you, your mammal brain perceives a risk. When another group strengthens, you risk losing resources to them. Your threat chemicals start to flow. Consciously, you know you can survive without belonging to a coalition, but you’ve inherited a brain that equates isolation with death.
When another group strengthens, you risk losing resources to them. Your threat chemicals start to flow. Consciously, you know you can survive without belonging to a coalition, but you’ve inherited a brain that equates isolation with death.
Mammal groups solidify when there’s a common threat. The benefits of sticking together motivate a mammal to tolerate harsh internal conflict. Lions stick together despite their fights over food because hyenas snatch the food of isolated lions. Baboons stick with troop-mates who will bite them over a berry because they are vulnerable to leopards when alone. Chimpanzees stick together despite frequent in-group harassment because neighboring chimps can kill them if alone (except for fertile females, who just get adopted). Wolves and meerkats stick together though their leaders cut them off from mating opportunity, because wolves need a group to hunt successfully, and meerkats need a group to avoid predators. Female elephants stick with controlling matriarchs because they cannot protect their young alone.
The mammalian style of cooperation is encapsulated by these words from Leon Uris’s 1960s novel The Haj: “Before I was nine, I had learned the basic canon of . . . life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel.”
Common enemies are the glue that bonds a group of mammals. The group feels safe because life without it is unsafe. Mammals tolerate pain from their in-group because they anticipate a worse pain without the group.
A study of baby rats provides eerie evidence of this tolerance for in-group pain. The babies in the study tolerated mild electric shocks in order to stick with their mothers. The researchers presented baby rats with a warning sound before the shock. If the mother was not present, the baby easily learned to escape the shock when it heard the sound. But when the mother was presented along with the shock, baby rats did not learn to run from the sound. Researchers confirmed that neurochemically the babies’ brains blocked learning to avoid linking their mother with pain. Such an association would not promote survival.
You may know people who tolerate cruelties from those they are close to. A person might stick with a cruel ally if they expect the world to be worse without the tormentor. They ignore the harm they actually experience because they have such strong expectations of external harm.
Literature is full of stories about people who stick with their herd despite great suffering. From Romeo and Juliet to Titanic, we hear of lovers in agony because group-mates don’t approve. When I hear such stories, I think, “Just move to the next village.” But they never do. Leaving old bonds and trusting new bonds was rarely done for much of human history. Today, we expect our five-year-olds to build new bonds when we send them off to kindergarten. This is a relatively new development, which helps us understand why choosing a table in the cafeteria triggers so much cortisol.
Human groups have coalesced around common enemies since the beginning of time. Today, we bond around common enemies more than we realize. The sales department bonds around shared hostility toward the marketing department, and the marketing people bond around their mutual mistrust of the sales people, but they all unite against the company’s competitor. Professors of classical literature bond around shared hostility toward the modern literature people, but they all join to oppose the administration. Second violins share antipathy toward first violins, and first violins share feelings about the second fiddles, but they present a united front against the woodwinds, whom they join with against the horns. Mammals bond in the face of common threats.
When cortisol spikes, common enemies are often blamed. We don’t know what triggered our cortisol much of the time, and blaming an external enemy helps you relieve that do-something feeling without causing friction inside your group. When you make outsiders the source of your pain, you stimulate the pleasure of in-group trust. It’s not surprising that so many groups get together and say, “Our suffering is their fault!”
If you don’t embrace the shared hostilities of your group-mates, they may suddenly withhold their trust. They may even define you as the enemy. When your social allies say, “We’re going to hell because of those idiots,” you have to agree or you won’t get to graze on their grass. If you dare to challenge the group’s worldview, you may find yourself feeling the sudden terror of a gazelle abandoned on the savannah, or a baboon attacked by a coalition of troop-mates. You may find yourself deferring to the enmity that binds the group because the alternatives feel so unsafe.
When others do this, it’s easy to see, but it’s harder to notice in yourself. You may think you are too evolved to feel enmity. Small-brained mammals have the same common enemies for generations. They’re born with circuits that help them distinguish the good guys from the bad guys in the way of their ancestors. Big-brained mammals develop new common enemies as their lives shift and change. You may hate seeing others bond around common enemies. But if you listen carefully to your interactions with those whom you trust, you will soon be able to identify the common enemy. Mammals are skilled at group action when united by a shared sense of threat.
You may hate seeing others bond around common enemies. But if you listen carefully to your interactions with those whom you trust, you will soon be able to identify the common enemy.
Social solidarity feels so good that it leads to confusing responses. A poignant example is J.G. Ballard’s experience in a Japanese concentration camp in Shanghai during World War II. Ballard reported fond memories of the concentration camp in a televised interview. His family was always together, he explained, and he was close to his neighbors. He knew the ordeal was painful to his parents and felt bad for them, but for himself, it felt good. He paints quite a different story in his novel, Empire of the Sun, which became the Steven Spielberg movie. His fictionalized self heroically protects friends and family from the horrors of camp life. The movie terrified me, so I was amazed to hear Ballard say he liked camp life because his father was home every day. It was a huge reminder of the power of oxytocin.
Russians who lived through Communism report similar experiences. A sense of shared fate eased the pain of political oppression and physical hardship. Social bonds thrived despite huge obstructions. You couldn’t gather for meals because there wasn’t enough food. You couldn’t gather for conversation because secret police were everywhere. One thing you could do was tell jokes, so these small messages built big bonds. Jokes brought shared risk, which stimulated an in-group feeling. Of course, in-group conflict was high because primitive kitchens and bathrooms were shared among multiple families. But the sense of common threat transcended it. When Communism ended, the common enemy vanished. Frustrations could be openly expressed instead of having to be diverted into the subtle bonding rituals of jokes. And so people lost the chemical balm that eased the tensions of daily life. The result was so much pain that many people started to idealize the old days of their oppression. Solidarity feels so good that it can distract the mammal brain from real threats.
Cynicism is a way to surround yourself with people who share your sense of threat. Quips about the awful state of the world trigger nice trusting feelings. You feel safe with other cynics and they feel safe with you. The oxytocin is soon metabolized, but you can always trigger more with more quips about your shared suffering at the hands of “the idiots in power.” Each oxytocin surge paves neural pathways that build group bonds. Renewing the sense of threat strengthens those circuits. But the brain habituates to old threats, so you need to keep enhancing the awfulness of your adversary to keep the oxytocin going. You may notice other people doing this. But when you and your in-group do it, it feels like you are just speaking truth.
You may sympathize with your adversaries’ perspective sometimes, but saying that is likely to get a bad reaction from your group-mates. This loss of oxytocin makes it hard to transcend cynicism. Losing your herd feels so unsafe that running with a cynical herd seems safe by comparison. When you’re not getting your oxytocin, something seems wrong with the world.
Sex triggers a lot of oxytocin. And since an oxytocin surge wires you to want more of what caused it, it’s not surprising that mammals are so focused on sex.
In the state of nature, mating opportunities are not as abundant as you may think. In fact, mating is highly restricted in animal groups. When too many babies are born, more of them perish, so mating behaviors evolved to improve the survival prospects of the young. Mating opportunity is often linked to strength because that promotes survival. Strength often grows from social solidarity, so mating opportunity often rests on social alliances. Individuals with strong group ties tend to get more nutrition and chase off more predators. More of their offspring survive, which makes them preferred mating partners. Gaining the trust of a solid group is a popular mammalian reproductive strategy. This can be hard to do, but brains good at doing it got reproduced.
There are male and female variations on this theme, and both attest to the power of neurochemical motivators. Male chimpanzees get mating opportunity by building social bonds with other males. It gets them more meat, which attracts females and builds strength. Dominant male chimps chase rivals away from fertile females but make exceptions for their male allies. If a male chimp courts a female directly, more dominant males will interfere. Female chimps typically prefer the dominant males, so bonding with the male power structure is the way to get a female chimp’s attention.
Female chimpanzees with stronger social bonds tend to have more surviving children. Lady chimps spend a lot of time foraging because they need so much food to support their almost-continual state of pregnancy and lactation. Foraging exposes the young ones to predators, so bonds with reliable babysitters promote survival. Bonding with both males and other females helps a mother chimp keep her child alive. She makes careful decisions about who to trust, however, because some chimps (even females) are aggressive with children.
Humans use social alliances to enhance their reproductive success in many different ways. You can probably think of many examples, both in your own life and throughout history.
Threats to your reproductive success (however you define it) trigger lots of cortisol. A widespread example of this is the refrain: “All the good ones are taken.” Mating problems are often blamed on “our times” or “our society,” despite the fact that mammals have always struggled for reproductive opportunity. Mammals have always fretted over threats to their children. Mammals have always lived with disappointments on the road to reproductive success. When you blame “our society,” it builds social bonds and the oxytocin eases the pain. But you’re still left with the feeling that something is wrong with the world.
Sticking with the herd is not easy. When you see a herd moving together, you forget that each individual brain is choosing each individual step. Consider a wildebeest standing at the edge of a river while its herd is crossing. As it chooses its moment to plunge in, the threats are daunting. It will get eaten by a crocodile if it jumps in before the others, but lagging behind risks predation too. So a wildebeest tries to jump at the same time as the others, though that increases the risk of getting kicked or gored on the way down. As the wildebeest waits for the others to jump, the rest of the herd piles up behind it. Getting shoved in would be worst of all, so it hastens to take the plunge. Herd following is hard work even when it looks like the animals are just following along.
Your brain is always weighing the threats and opportunities that surround you. When you see others go in one direction, you evaluate the rewards and the threats. You ponder alternatives and weigh their rewards and threats as well. You hope for a perfect path with all rewards and no threats. When you don’t see one, you may feel like something is wrong with the world.
Fortunately, there’s another happy chemical to help you feel good. That chemical is serotonin, and you’ll learn all about it in the next chapter.
Oxytocin creates the good feeling of social trust, but an oxytocin droop feels so bad that people strive to stimulate more in sometimes surprising ways.