Here's an interesting connection between our biology and behavior: Apparently our willingness to risk our life for another person depends on the level of the hormone progesterone in our saliva.
A team of researchers, led by Stephanie Brown and Barbara Fredrickson, have a new paper reporting on the link between progesterone and certain behaviors, like bonding and altruism. Previous research has shown that higher levels of progesterone increase our desire to bond with other people. But according to the new research, it appears there's a feedback loop: Emotionally bonding with others increases our levels of progesterone.
The increased level of this hormone, the researchers say, improves our well-being, reduces our stress and anxiety, and makes us more likely to help other people (even at a cost to ourselves).
As a write-up of the study reports:

According to Brown, the findings are consistent with a new evolutionary theory of altruism which argues that the hormonal basis of social bonds enables people to suppress self-interest when necessary in order to promote the well-being of another person, as when taking care of children or helping ailing family members or friends.

Check out Realise2, a new online test from the Centre of Applied Positive Psychology that identifies your strengths (what you love to do), your learned behaviors (what you do well), and your weaknesses (what you're bad at).
It turns out most of us don't know what our personal strengths are. We're not particularly good at recognizing what we're good at. The cool thing about Realise2 is that it highlights not only your "realized" strengths—the things you'd probably say you do well—but also your "unrealized" strengths, the ones you're not yet marshaling to their full potential. "For those people interested in self-growth, it is interesting to look at the unrealized strengths category ... those that are energizing, but which you use far too seldom." says Robert Biswas-Diener, a positive psychologist and CAPP's program director.
By contrast, "learned behaviors" are skills we're good at, but don't enjoy. We have to watch out for these, the researchers say, because people will often ask us to use these good skills, which drains us over time. Learning how to moderate these behaviors will keep us from burning out, they say, and lead to a happier, more fulfilling life.
Realise2 is a sophisticated test, with 180 questions, so it takes a while to get through, but the payoff is an in-depth feedback report and program that helps you chart personal growth and manage your weaknesses. It costs about 25 dollars to take, but a portion of the fee goes to The Strengths Project, CAPP's positive psychology charitable mission in Kolkata, India. —Heather Wax

Humans are universally optimistic, according to a new study from the University of Kansas and the Gallup World Poll. More than 150,000 people in more than 140 countries were polled, and 89 percent say they expect the next five years to be as good or better than their life now. An even higher number—95 percent—expect their life five years from now to be as good or better than their life was five years ago.
Still, some countries are more optimistic than others. Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, and New Zealand are at the top, while Zimbabwe, Egypt, Haiti, and Bulgaria are at the bottom. The United States ranks 10th.

A group of Swiss researchers decided to see what would happen if they gave some couples a nasal spray of oxytocin—often called the "love hormone"—and they had them talk about difficult and stressful topics that often lead to conflict (things like home finances). Oxytocin, whose levels surge during sex and childbirth, has long been shown to reduce anxiety and play a key role in our sense of trust and desire to connect with others. Most of the receptors for the hormone are located in the brain's amygdala, a region that's key for social interaction and processing emotions.
What the researchers found is that oxytocin increased positive communication about negative behaviors and reduced stress levels in the couples.
“We are just beginning to understand the powerful effects of hormones and chemicals released by the body in the context of important social interactions,” says Dr. John Krystal, the editor of Biological Psychiatry, where the study appears. “As this knowledge grows, the question of how to best use our developing capacities to pharmacologically alter social processes will become an important question to explore.”
Even though commercial versions of oxytocin are already available online, the researchers say we shouldn't expect medical treatments involving the hormone anytime soon. Using the hormone as a drug hasn't been tested and evaluated in humans yet, and many have ethical concerns about a drug that can be used—and abused—as a "social enhancer." —Heather Wax

A group of scientists at the California Institute of Technology decided to see what they could learn about self-control and how it works by testing a bunch of volunteers who were on a diet. The researchers asked the dieters to choose between different foods and found that some of them showed enormous self-control, almost always picking a healthy food regardless of taste. Others, though, showed very little self-control, almost always choosing the food they thought tasted better regardless of its nutritional value. The researchers then looked at brain scans taken while the dieters made their choices.
"A very basic question in economics, psychology, and even religion, is why some people can exercise self-control but others cannot," says Antonio Rangel, a professor of economics at Caltech who worked on the study. "From the perspective of modern neuroscience, the question becomes, 'What is special about the circuitry of brains that can exercise good behavioral self-control?'"
If the researchers are right, the brains of people who have strong self-control are different from the brains of those who have weaker willpower. We all use the same area of the brain to make value-based decisions about things like what to eat, they say, and the more activity this brain region shows in response to a certain food, the more likely we are to choose that food.
In dieters with low self-control, this brain area shows activity in response to the taste of food alone. In dieters with strong self-control, however, a second brain region modulates the activity of the first—and, as a result, these people can weigh not only basic desires (like taste) but also more abstract factors (like healthiness) when making a decision.
"We rarely got people to say they'd eat cauliflower if they didn't like cauliflower," says Todd Hare, a postdoc in neuroeconomics who also worked on the study. "But they would choose not to eat ice cream or candy bars, knowing they could eat the healthier index food instead." —Heather Wax

What makes some children who witness domestic violence more resilient than others? That question was the focus of a long-term study by researchers at Michigan State University, who looked at children who had seen acts of violence against their mothers. They discovered that kids with easy-going natures and mentally healthy mothers were less likely to develop emotional or behavioral problems than other kids who had who witnessed violence at home.
The reason, say researchers, is that easy-going kids may be less likely to react to stresses and more likely to get support from adults in their lives. And mothers with good mental health are likely better able to help their children cope.
The findings "highlight the importance of individual and family resources to face the challenges of growing up in a highly detrimental environment," says Cecilia Martinez-Torteya, a graduate student in clinical psychology at Michigan State and the study's lead author. "Intervention efforts may be improved by targeting mothers' symptoms of depression and considering children's temperaments." —Heather Wax

Marriage appears to change the kind of support we need from our partners, according to a new study from Northwestern University. It seems that when we're dating someone, happiness and satisfaction with the relationship depend on whether the other person supports our hopes and dreams. Once married, however, the focus seems to shift: While its still important for a person to support our aspirations, we now put a greater emphasis on commitment and whether a partner helps us fulfill our obligations and responsibilities.
This means "the feelings of being loved and supported that people use to judge who makes a good girlfriend or boyfriend may not be completely trustworthy in deciding who makes a good husband or wife. Those feelings may only partially capture the emotions that will determine your satisfaction with the person you marry,” says Daniel Molden, a psychologist at Northwestern and the study's lead author.
"People planning to get married should think about not only how their partners support what they hope to achieve but also about how their partners support what they feel obligated to accomplish. We could end up with both happier marriages and more satisfied people in general.”
The study will be published in the July issue of Psychological Science. —Heather Wax

Our friend Mike McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and the author of Beyond Revenge, appeared on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday to talk about the neuroscience of forgiveness. "Revenge and forgiveness are like two sides of the coin," he says. "We know absolutely that revenge is this universal feature of human nature, but we also know now that there is a natural, evolved capacity to forgive that also exists in every human mind on the planet."
Forgiveness, scientists have discovered, involves the anterior cingulate cortices, an area of the brain that's also associated with empathy—which means "forgiveness is born in part of the experience of somebody else's pain," McCullough says."It doesn't feel very good to people to seek revenge against people they feel sorry for." —Heather Wax

In recent years, there have been a whole lot of studies that show the connection between emotions and health. Earlier this month, at the annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society, researchers at the University of Kansas released the findings from their investigation with Gallup, which they say prove positive emotions play an important role in maintaining physical well-being.
Until now, most of the research on the link between emotions and health have been conducted in industrialized countries. So researchers began to wonder how important happiness is to health in places where basic needs like shelter and food are lacking. They used data from the Gallup World Poll, which gathered reports from 150,000 adults in more than 140 countries.
Interestingly, they found that the link between emotions and physical health is more powerful than the link between health and basic human needs (like getting enough nourishment). In fact, the connection between positive emotions and better health is strongest in the most impoverished countries. —Heather Wax

According to a new study, we're happier when we spend money on experiences rather than possessions. The reason: "Experiential purchases"—like a meal in a restaurant, theater tickets, or a vacation—satisfy our need for social connectedness and make us feel more alive, says San Francisco State University psychologist Ryan Howell, who worked on the study with graduate student Graham Hill. Their results also show that the experiences make us happier regardless of how much we spend on them or how much our income is—and since we're left with long-lasting positive memories that we "don't tend to get bored of," says Howell, they lead to long-term satisfaction.
The findings were presented earlier this month at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting. —Heather Wax

It looks like happiness levels are evening out across the American population. According to a new study by University of Pennsylvania economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, the gap between the happy and the unhappy—what researchers call "happiness inequality"—has become much smaller over the last few decades. "The U.S. population as a whole is not getting happier," Stevenson says. "For every unhappy person who became happier, there's someone on the other side coming down."
The researchers looked at data collected from 1972 to 2006 through the University of Chicago's General Social Survey and found that the happiness gap between white and nonwhites narrowed by two-thirds; whites are slightly less happy, and nonwhites are significantly happier. The gap between men and women narrowed, too. Men are a little happier, while women are less happy. There is one area, however—education level—where the gap continues to grow: People with a college degree are happier than they were in the early 1970s, while those without a college education have become less happy.
But overall, "Americans are becoming more similar to each other in terms of reported happiness," says Stevenson. "It's an interesting finding because other research shows increasing gaps in income, consumption, and leisure time." —Heather Wax

Spirituality—defined as an inner belief system that provides strength and comfort—is key to how happy a child is, according to a new study by psychologist Mark Holder at the University of British Columbia and his colleagues Judi Wallace and Ben Coleman.
In adults and adolescents, both spirituality and religiousness have been linked to increased happiness, but in children 8 to 12, the researchers found, two aspects of spirituality—feeling one's life has meaning and value (the personal aspect) and deep, quality interpersonal relationships (the communal aspect)—are strong predictors of happiness. "Enhancing personal meaning may be a key factor in the relationship between spirituality and happiness," the researchers say, and to that end, encouraging children to express kindness toward others, perform altruistic acts, and volunteer might help make them happier.
Organized religious practices and rituals, on the other hand—like going to church, praying, or meditating—seem to have little effect on children's happiness.
The study appears in the Journal of Happiness Studies. —Heather Wax

Mike McCullough has posted a prepublication copy of the article that he and fellow University of Miami psychologist Brian Willoughby wrote for the Psychological Bulletin. After reviewing years of empirical evidence (including many replicated research findings in neuroscience, psychology, and sociology), McCullough and Willoughby conclude that certain aspects of religious belief and behavior foster self-control. Prayer and meditation affect the parts of the brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control, the authors find, and religion often gives people clear standards for their behavior and the sense that God is watching what they do.
As a result, those who are religious might be better at achieving long-term goals, they say, because self-control allows them to forgo small rewards in the short term. And when people see their goals as valued and "sacred," they put more energy and effort into pursuing them. The findings also might explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse and delinquency.
"The importance of self-control and self-regulation for understanding human behavior are well known to social scientists, but the possibility that the links of religiosity to self-control might explain the links of religiosity to health and behavior has not received much explicit attention," says McCullough. Yet, he adds, "the same social force that motivates acts of charity and generosity can also motivate people to strap bomb belts around their waists and then blow themselves up in crowded city buses. By thinking of religion as a social force that provides people with resources for controlling their impulses (including the impulse for self-preservation, in some cases) in the service of higher goals, religion can motivate people to do just about anything." —Heather Wax

A new study by a group of psychologists from Sun Yat-Sen University in China and the University of Southampton in England has identified an interesting connection between loneliness and nostalgia. People who report feeling the loneliest also report receiving the least amount of social support, but they also tend to be the most nostalgic, the study found. And this nostalgia, in turn, increases perceptions of social support—likely helping to counteract the feelings of loneliness. So while the direct effect of loneliness is to reduce perceptions of social support, the indirect effect is to increase the perception of support via nostalgia.
According to the researchers, who published their study in the journal Psychological Science, this "restorative" function of nostalgia is especially apparent among people who are resilient (those who are best able to recover from traumatic events and adversity); in other words, they're more likely to use nostalgia to overcome feelings of loneliness. Yet, they say, potentially anyone "could be trained to benefit from the restorative function of nostalgia when actual social support is lacking or is perceived as lacking." —Heather Wax

Both men and women look for altruism when choosing a mate, and women place significantly more importance on altruistic traits—represented by things like donating blood or volunteering in a hospital—than on anything else, according to a new study from a group of biologists and psychologists at The University of Nottingham in England.
“For many years the standard explanation for altruistic behavior toward nonrelatives has been based on reciprocity and reputation—a version of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,'" says biologist Tim Phillips, who led the study that appears in the British Journal of Psychology (and which seems to be based on his doctoral thesis). "I believe we need to look elsewhere to understand the roots of human altruism. The expansion of the human brain would have greatly increased the cost of raising children so it would have been important for our ancestors to choose mates both willing and able to be good, long-term parents. Displays of altruism could well have provided accurate clues to this and genes linked to altruism would have been favored as a result.”
In other words, the hypothesis is that human altruism evolved as a result of sexual selection. “Sexual selection," concludes Phillips, "could well come to be seen as exerting a major influence on what made humans human.” —Heather Wax

During last night's debate, both Barack Obama and John McCain said the nation is facing its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But there's some good news: Money is only one part of what makes people genuinely happy, according to Ed Diener and his son Robert Biswas-Diener, who together wrote the new book Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a leading expert on the science of happiness and a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, while Biswas-Diener, a lecturer at Portland State University, is called the "Indiana Jones of positive psychology" because he's studied well-being in some of the most remote places on the planet.
Money and happiness are linked, of course: Money can buy better medical care, education, and vacations, and it can translate, they say, into greater social status, feelings of control, and opportunities to make lasting contributions to society. But "the effect of money on happiness is often not large. Income appears to buy happiness, but the exchange rate isn't great. Extra dollars often amount to modest gains in happiness," they write. "More important than the absolute amount of your paycheck or your exact net worth is your attitude toward your money and the ways in which you spend it. Rich people who spend outside their means feel poor, and poor people who live within a careful budget feel secure. Regardless of your actual income, it is your material aspirations that color your mood. ... Even for people in wealthy societies, problems can arise when they become too wedded to the idea of striking it rich and accumulating wealth. Materialists are generally less satisfied with their lives than folks who highly value love, friendships, and other worthwhile pursuits."
True psychological wealth—the feeling that we are living "in a rewarding, engaged, meaningful, and enjoyable way"—depends more on the pursuit of important goals than on the acquisition of goods, the researchers say, and it involves strong relationships, an ability to adapt to life's changes, and a connection to something larger than yourself. —Heather Wax

"The forgiveness instinct is every bit as wired in as the revenge instinct. It seems that our minds work very hard to get away from resentment, if we can," Mike McCullough, a professor of psychology and religious studies at the University of Miami, says in a New York Times piece about the role of revenge motivation in people's responses to the credit market meltdown.
McCullough, who recently wrote the book Beyond Revenge, says that over time, the urge for revenge slowly fades. Researcher believe this urge to retaliate against cheaters and freeloaders—even at our own risk—likely evolved to protect and stabilize our communities against threats and invaders. "The urge to take revenge or punish cheaters is not a disease or toxin or sign that something has gone wrong," says McCullough. "From the point of view of evolution, it’s not a problem but a solution." Unfortunately, he says, these urges "often promote behavior that turns out to be spiteful in the long run."
Back in March, a study by mathematician and biologist Martin Nowak and his colleagues at Harvard University showed that punitive behavior doesn't benefit the individual who punishes or the group as a whole. While acts of spite might have evolved to establish hierarchies or defend ownership, they don't promote cooperation and often trigger a spiral of retaliation that is detrimental and destructive. "Our finding has a very positive message," the researchers told Science & Religion Today. "In an extremely competitive setting, the winners are those who resist the temptation to escalate conflicts, while the losers punish and perish." —Heather Wax

Alexander Todorov, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, and Nikolaas Oosterhof, a research specialist, have built a computer program that will help scientists better analyze why certain human faces evoke trust while others elicit fear. In past studies, the researchers learned that people make instant judgments about a person's face and that these judgments then affect how they feel about the person. "Humans seem to be wired to look to faces to understand the person's intentions," Todorov said in a press release. "People are always asking themselves, 'Does this person have good or bad intentions?'"
Recently, the researchers discovered that these split-second decisions are based on two things: whether a person should be approached or avoided and whether a person seems weak or strong. So they decided to try to define just which facial characteristics—namely, what eye, nose, and mouth placements—make a face seem trustworthy or dominant. The most trustworthy face, the researchers found, has a U-shaped mouth and eyes that look almost surprised, with upturned eyebrows. The most untrustworthy face has a mouth curled down at the edges and eyebrows that also point downward—basically, an angry face. The least dominant faces, they say, have a larger distance between the eyes and eyebrows than other faces do. While you can't control your facial features, the study shows that expressions do matter, which could be an extra important lesson for people whose jobs require a high-level of public interaction (think teachers, politicians, and religious leaders).
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online. —Heather Wax

Researchers have known for some time that when people spend a few minutes writing about a value that's important to them, they become more receptive and less defensive when someone later criticizes an aspect of their behavior as irrational, irresponsible, or unhealthy. The guess was that writing about these values boosted self-esteem, making people feel good about themselves and less defensive, but studies failed to find the link.
Now, Jennifer Crocker and Yu Niiya from the University of Michigan and Dominik Mischkowski from the University of Konstanz in Germany think they've uncovered the mechanism behind the process with new experiments that looked at how people feel after they write about their values: Instead of making people focus on themselves, writing about important values makes people feel loving and connected, reminding them of people and things they care about beyond themselves. These feelings of love and connectedness could affect levels of the hormone oxytocin, increasing the sense of trust (which we wrote about yesterday) and possibly accounting for the reduced defensiveness when it comes to criticizing their behavior.
The new studies, the researchers conclude in the current issue of Psychological Science, "raise the prospect that reminding people what they love or care about may enable them to transcend the self and may foster learning under difficult circumstances." —Heather Wax

There's news today that Swedish and British scientists have used fMRI to show that inhaling a spray of the hormone oxytocin can reduce anxiety in certain people. Oxytocin is famous for the role it plays in lovemaking and childbirth (when levels surge) and is also thought to be important for our desire to connect with others and our sense of trust. Most of the receptors for the hormone are located in the brain's amygdala, a region that's key for social interaction and processing emotions.
Commercial versions of oxytocin are easily available online. Liquid Trust Spray, for example, which touts itself as the "first oxytocin product," promises to "enhance people's trust in you." According to the company, with Liquid Trust people "can find you more attractive. People can feel more relaxed and at ease with you. People can be more likely to trust your opinions. You can gain more respect." Should we all be buying oxytocin over the Internet, then?
Not so fast, says Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, who tells Time magazine: "We should look at other ways to juice the system without having to put two spoons of liquid up your nose every four hours." Zak, who has long studied the relationship between oxytocin and trust, says there are more natural ways to boost the hormone, like yoga, exercise, massage, petting an animal, or even sharing a meal with a friend.
Sue Carter, a professor of psychiatry and co-director of the Brain Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, agrees. "If you feel safe and allow yourself to feel safe, you can learn, you can cooperate with others, you can build societies," she tells the magazine. "Now does that mean we should run around and spray everyone with oxytocin? I don't think so." —Heather Wax