Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

decrease threatening facial displays: S. D. Holman, and R. W. Goy, “Experiential and Hormonal Correlates of Care-giving in Rhesus Macaques,” in Motherhood in Human and Nonhuman Primates: Biosocial Determinants, ed. C. R. Pryce and R. D. Martin (Basel: Karger, 1995), 87–93.

Little domestic chicks: J. Panksepp, E. Nelson, and M. Bekkedal, “Bain Systems for the Mediation of Social Separation-Distress and Social-Reward: Evolutionary Antecedents and Neuropeptide Intermediaries,” in The Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation, ed. C. S. Carter, I. I. Lederhendler, and B. Kirpatrick (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1997), 78–100.

the physiological underpinnings of love, devotion, and trust: For an accessible review of the literature on oxytocin, see K. U. Morberg, The Oxytocin Factor (Cambridge, MA: De Capo, 2003), 105–32.

In studies of lactating women: E. B. Keverne, “Psychopharmacology of Maternal Behavior,” Journal of Psychopharmacology 10 (1996): 16–22; C. S. Carter and M. Altemus, “Integrative Functions of Lactational Hormones in Social Behavior and Stress Management,” in Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 807, ed. Carter and Lederhendler (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1997), 164–74.

Prepartum mothers who show higher baseline levels of oxytocin later showed increased attachment-related behavior: R. Feldman et al., “Evidence for a Neuroendocrinological Foundation of Human Affiliation: Plasma Oxytocin Levels Across Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period Predict Mother-Infant Bonding,” Psychological Science 18, no. 11 (2007): 965–70.

Gian Gonzaga and I undertook a Darwinian study of sexual desire and romantic love: Gonzaga et al., “Love and the Commitment Problem in Romantic Relations and Friendship.”

We next turned to a query of our chemical quarry, oxytocin: G. C. Gonzaga et al., “Romantic Love and Sexual Desire in Close Bonds,” Emotion 6 (2006): 163–79.

In her cultural history: Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Holt, 2006).

Zak proposes that oxytocin is a biological underpinning of trust: M. Kosfeld et al., “Oxytocin Increases Trust in Humans,” Nature 435 (2005): 673–76.

the love of humanity: B. Campos, M. A. Logli, and D. Keltner, “Love of Humanity,” unpublished manuscript.

the health of communities depends on trust and the love of humanity: Robert Sampson, “The Neighborhood Context of Well-Being,” Perspective in Biology and Medicine 46 (2003): S53-S64.

children prove to be much more resilient in the wake of their parents’ divorce when they feel a sense of connection: For several essays on more peaceful divorce, see Jason Marsh and Dacher Keltner, ed., “The 21st Century Family,” Greater Good 4, no. 2 (2007).

loving relations get more important, and love all the sweeter: L. L. Carstensen and S. T. Charles, “Emotion in the Second Half of Life,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 5 (1998): 144–49.

romantic love dips: Helen Fischer, Why We Love (New York: Owl, 2004).

I would ask them to read: Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History (New York: Viking, 2005).

to arrive at that magic ratio of five positive feelings for every toxic negative one that enables marriages: Gottman, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail.

It is a kelson of creation: Song of Myself, in Walt Whitman, The Portable Walt Whitman, ed. M. Van Doren (New York: Penguin, 1945), 36.

COMPASSION

 

historian Jonathan Glover documents many such “sympathy breakthroughs”: Jonathan Glover, Humanity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

As Charles Darwin developed his first account: Darwin, Descent.

Other influential thinkers in the Western canon: Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought. For Nussbaum’s comprehensive study of compassion in Western thought, see “Compassion: The Basic Social Emotion,” Social Philosophy and Policy 13 (1996): 27–58. For another assessment of Western thought’s approach to the emotions, see Oatley, Emotions: A Brief History.

“A feeling of sympathy is beautiful and amiable”: Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, trans. J. T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960).

“If any civilization is to survive”: Ayn Rand, “Faith and Force: Destroyers of the Modern World,” Philosophy: Who Needs It? (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982).