Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life (28 page)

Although our individual heads are full of simple selfish mechanisms tuned to narrow local inputs, we somehow manage to come together to form smoothly functioning groups, organized societies, and international economic markets. How does this transformation from separate individuals to interconnected groups happen? Enter dynamical systems theory. As I discussed in Chapter 12, research on complex multicomponent systems, such as ant colonies and human neighborhoods, has led to some fascinating insights. One is the discovery of self-organization, or the spontaneous emergence of order out of initial disarray. Another is the discovery that tremendous complexity can emerge from a few simple parameters. Natural selection is itself a stunning example of both these principles, with initially random variations
providing the basis for the emergence of complex living organisms exquisitely adapted to their natural habitats, like night-flying mammals who use sound to see in the dark, long-beaked birds that can hover like helicopters as they drink nectar from deep-stemmed flowers, and naked apes that can communicate complex ideas about bats, hummingbirds, and the meaning of life.

When we join together the ideas of dynamical systems theory with those of evolutionary psychology, we begin to understand why different social geometries and different forms of social stability emerge from the different biases that guide interactions between parents and children, between lovers, between coworkers, between friends, and between tribes of faceless strangers.

There is a lot more that could be said here, but it will suffice to say that the field of psychology, which was in a shaky theoretical state in the years leading up to 1975, has now been revolutionized. And although none of my fellow troublemakers has yet been elected president of the American Psychological Association, à la Nelson Mandela, we have at least been released from our intellectual prison cells and have been enjoying freedom of the press. Sure, there are still those who want to cling to one or another version of the blank slate view, who fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy, or who prefer the more empirically manageable strictures of an analytic and linear approach to science. But for the most part, the revolution is over, and we are in the process of rebuilding a more unified and balanced republic of behavioral science.

After I had written several chapters for this book, I learned that I was going to be featured on an episode of
The Oprah Winfrey Show
. I had been in a popular documentary with the alluring title
Science of Sex
. I'm guessing that Oprah or one of her assistants had seen that documentary
and figured the topic would interest her audience, many of whom tune in to hear psychologists, pop stars, and regular people talk about how to overcome everyday problems, have satisfying relationships, and live a more fulfilling life. I started pondering whether the ideas in this book had anything to say about the version of the “meaning of life” question that most of her viewers probably found more relevant: How do you live a more meaningful life?

As I pondered the Oprah question, I was making lunch for my younger son to take to his preschool and calculating how I might squeeze in some time with my older son and his two kids before getting to work that day. I had, as usual, a backlog of work to do; I had agreed to edit a book dedicated to my mentor Bob Cialdini, I had a half dozen research papers to write, and more to revise. Besides all that, there were overdue reviews to do for journal editors, letters of recommendation to write for my graduate students, and decisions to make about upcoming grants—and that was just the job-related list. At home, my tax return was overdue, the roof had a serious leak, and small mammals moving into my attic had to be evicted forthwith. With all I had going on, I should have been miserably anxious, but surprisingly, I was feeling rather calm and focused—enjoying the process of spreading cashew butter on a piece of wheat bread and taking care to trim the crust to my younger son's precise and demanding specifications. And then it struck me: Whatever else has been going on in my life, my children's needs have always trumped all other demands. As I began to think about it, I realized that all this research on people's simple and selfish biases really did have something to say about how to live a more meaningful life.

Unlike many of the other things I have done to seek pleasure, the time I've spent with either of my sons has never given me the slightest hangover of regret. Although it has not always made me euphorically happy to respond to their needs, it is the one thing in my life that reliably makes me feel truly fulfilled. I should not have been surprised,
given what I know about evolution and behavior. Human beings are ultimately designed not to seek ecstatic happiness from dawn to dusk but to be linked into a supportive web with other human beings. Indeed, two of the bedrock principles of evolutionary biology are kin selection and reciprocal altruism. The first explains why we are driven to take care of our family members; the second clarifies why we often go to such great lengths to do favors for our friends and coworkers. And although the other central principles, sexual selection and differential parental investment, are typically considered as they relate to showing off and having sex, they are, for human males and females alike, intimately connected to the process of qualifying to be a parent.

I am not suggesting that we all ought to go forth and multiply, ignoring the problem of overpopulation, or that you rush out to make five hundred new Facebook “friends.” What I am suggesting instead is that you let yourself enjoy the natural pleasures of taking care of the intimate associates you already have. You can regard time spent with family and friends as a distraction from the central task of life, or you can slow down and let your brain's social mechanisms savor the experiences.

This is not a self-help book, so I won't try to work up a list of ten rules for personal fulfillment, rules like “Stick by your family,” “Love the one you're with,” and “Be loyal to your team members.” But I will tell you about the worst piece of advice I heard in my life. I heard it when I was moving toward a divorce from my first wife: “You've got to do what's right for you.” I heard it again and again from different people, and even at the time I wondered how doing what was right for me could also be right for my young son. Like many others before and since, I learned the hard way that the mantra should have been “You've got to do what's right for those you love.”

While I was avoiding the serious work of finishing up this book, I snuck off to the bookstore and bought a book called
The How of Happiness
by my friend Sonja Lyubomirsky. Unlike a lot of self-help books, Sonja's book offers advice based on rigorous research by a new generation of researchers in a field called “positive psychology.” And guess what? Their research suggests that, although family members and friends can often be demanding and annoying on a moment-to-moment basis, people who spend time doing nice things for their loved ones are ultimately less depressed and more fulfilled in their own personal lives.

My favorite positive psychology study is one published in
Science
by Liz Dunn and her colleagues at UBC. They found that people who spent their salary bonuses on other people were happier than those who spent it on themselves. And they did an experiment in which they gave students five dollars or twenty dollars and instructed them to either spend the money on themselves or on someone else. Like rational economists, other students guessed that it would make people happiest to get the larger amount and to spend it on themselves. But that is not what happened. Instead, the students were happiest when they bought someone else a gift, regardless of the amount. These findings are part of a heartening wave of new research suggesting that human beings are chock-full of mechanisms designed to make us feel good when we cement our bonds with those around us.

It is customary to put the dedication at the beginning of a book, and it is often a formality, with no real connection to the book that follows. But given what I've just been talking about, it makes the most sense to put the dedication right here: to my wife Carol Luce, and my two sons, Liam, age six, and David, age thirty-two. My wife, besides keeping me nurtured on foods prepared to the precise standards of
Cook's Illustrated,
joined with her wonderfully supportive mother,
Jean Luce, to sponsor me for the long periods I spent holed up in my summer house, neglecting parental duties while writing this book.

It is also appropriate to mention here my longtime collaborators and friends—Rich Keefe, Bob Cialdini, Mark Schaller, Melanie Trost, Ed Sadalla, Sara Gutierres, and Steve Neuberg. And then there is a whole new generation of former students and current collaborators who, as you have seen in the research I described in this book, are now carrying me on their backs, including Jill Sundie, Norm Li, Vlad Griskevicius, Jon Maner, Vaughn Becker, Josh Ackerman, and Jessica Li.

John Alcock, one of my favorite science writers, not only allowed me to sit in on his scientific writing class, but then was generous enough to go through an entire draft of this book and provide me with immensely detailed and helpful advice. David Lundberg Kenrick read through the book with the talented eye of a screenwriter. My wife Carol Luce not only supported me during the long periods I spent writing but also then gave it a reading with her unique twin expertise as a statistical analyst and wife.

And then there is my first wife, Elaine Lundberg, who suffered through my years as a testosterone-crazed young man and who now collaborates with me to help take care of our two grandchildren. In different ways, all these people showed me firsthand how the human mind is wired up to connect us to other human beings and helped me understand the two meanings of the meaning of life.