of philosophical ethical egoism and
argued that all altruistic acts are
disguised maneuvers to perpetuate our
own genes. 15 But there are other
interpretations. Social neuroscientist
John Cacioppo interprets our motives
toward inclusive fitness and kin altruism
as the core of human intergenerational
care and the vital link between sociality
and spirituality. In cooperation with his
colleagues, his research on loneliness
Page | 35
uses evolutionary theory on inclusive
fitness to order many of his findings.
From the perspective of this model of
basic human motivations, loneliness can
be seen as a condition that “promotes
inclusive fitness by signaling ruptures in
social connections and motivates the
repair or replacement of these
connections.” 16 According to his
interpretation of inclusive fitness, our
gene continuity is not assured by simply
having our own children. Our children
also must have children as well. And
this is a challenge entailing long-term
expenditures of energy. To account for
this, Cacioppo writes something about
human infant dependency that is very
close to what both the Greek philosopher
Aristotle and the medieval Roman
Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas set
down many centuries earlier. Cacioppo
says,
For many species, the offspring need
little or no parenting to survive and
reproduce. Homo sapiens, however,
are born to the longest period of
abject dependency of any species.
Simple reproduction, therefore, is not
sufficient to ensure that one’s genes
make it into the gene pool. For an
individual’s genes to make it to the
gene pool, one’s offspring must
survive to reproduce. Moreover,
social connections and the behaviors
they engender (e.g., cooperation,
altruism, alliances) enhance the
survival and reproduction of those
involved, increasing inclusive
fitness. 17
According to this view, the
twofold interaction between inclusive
fitness and the long period of infant
dependency has shaped humans over the
long course of evolution into the social
and caring creatures we are. Sociality is
a fundamental characteristic of humans,
and, according to Cacioppo, spirituality,
in its various forms, is an extension of
sociality. Religion is generally,
although not always, good for our
mental and physical health - our heart,
our blood pressure, our self-esteem, and
our self-control - just like having good
friends and family or not being lonely
are also good for our well-being. 18
Cacioppo and colleagues do not equate
sociality and religion; they are fully
aware that religions are complex
phenomena with many different
doctrinal, ethical, ritual, organizational,
personal, and social features that require
either rigorous experimental or clinical
population studies to sort out, even from
the perspective of how they affect
health. Nonetheless, he seems to hold
that the sociality that most religions offer
is a key reason for their efficacy in
human well-being.
Does Christian Love Build on Health?
But my concern is the topic of
Christian love and not simply
Christianity’s contribution to mental and
physical health. Although Jesus is said
to have performed miracles of health,
offering health in this world has never
been at the core of Christianity or, for
that matter, the other Abrahamic
religions of Judaism and Islam.
Bringing to maturity loving and selfgiving
persons has been the primary
concern of Christianity, whether or not
this contributes to health and well-being.
But the question is, as I elaborated
above, does Christian love build on eros
- that is, our strivings for health and
other goods - or come exclusively from
some trans-natural source as Nygren
believes the normative tradition taught?
And did Christianity ever identify eros
and our deepest motivations with
Page | 36
something like inclusive fitness and kin
altruism?
Let me start with Aquinas. In the
“Supplement” to his Summa Theologica
III,
Thomas follows Aristotle and the
Roman natural-law theorist Ulpian in
asserting that humans share with all
animals an inclination to have offspring.
19 Having said this, he then introduces a
very modern sounding commentary on
the uniqueness to humans of the long
period of infant dependency. Notice the
similarity of his argument to the words
of Cacioppo above. Aquinas writes,
Yet nature does not incline thereto in
the same way in all animals; since
there are animals whose offspring
are able to seek food immediately
after birth, or are sufficiently fed by
their mother; and in these there is no
tie between male and female;
whereas in those whose offspring
needing the support of both parents,
although for a short time, there is a
certain tie, as may be seen in certain
birds. In man, however, since the
child needs the parents’ care for a
long time, there is a very great tie
between male and female, to which
tie even the generic nature inclines. 20
Although there is in this quote a
description of how family formation
emerges at the human level, there is an
implicit argument for both the fact of
human infant dependency and what we
today call inclusive fitness as well. But
these ideas are even more evident in the
next quote, although stated very much
from the male point of view, a habit
typical of his time. Aquinas says, “Since
the natural life which cannot be
preserved in the person of an undying
father is preserved, by a kind of
succession, in the person of the son, it is
naturally befitting that the son succeed in
the things belonging to the father.” 21
Aquinas’s main source for this insight
was Aristotle’s Politics. In one place
Aristotle wrote, “ In common with other
animals and with plants, mankind have a
natural desire to leave behind them an
image of themselves.” 22
However, in both Aristotle and
Aquinas, such claims were not just about
the importance of kin continuity, they
were statements about the origin and
need of long-term investments by
parents at the human level. In contrast
to his teacher Plato who, in his Republic,
had advocated removing children from
their biological parents in an effort to
overcome the civil frictions created by
nepotism, 23 Aristotle counters with an
assertion about the origins of human
care. Aristotle wrote, “That which is
common to the greatest number has the
least care bestowed upon it.” He
believed that in Plato’s state, “love will
be watery….Of the two qualities which
chiefly inspire regard and affection –
that a thing is your own and that it is
your only one – neither can exist in such
a state as this.” 24 This is an assertion
about the importance of kin altruism in
human care.
Although Aquinas saw these
natural inclinations as important for the
formation of long-term human care, he
believed that they were not sufficient for
mature parental love. Powerful social,
cultural, and indeed religious
reinforcements were also necessary for
stable parental investment to be realized.
This, once again, is due, according to
Aquinas, because of the many long years
of human childhood dependency; human
children need their parents for a very
long period of time and over the course
Page | 37
of many contingencies and challenges.
This leads Aquinas to develop his
theology of marriage as a way of
consolidating and stabilizing parental
commitment, especially paternal
commitment, to their dependent
children. 25
Although neither Aristotle nor
Aquinas presented the full
intergenerational scope of Cacioppo’s
interpretation of kin altruism and
inclusive fitness – that it must extend to
our children’s children and not just our
own – both perspectives comprehended
the interlocking nature of kin altruism
and the well-spring of care, long-term
human commitment, and hence some of
the rudimentary energies of human
morality.
Of course, Aquinas and those
who followed him supplemented these
naturalistic observations with additional
epistemological presuppositions that
may seem strange to scientists. These
included the idea that God works
through nature as well as grace, hence
God is present in the kin altruistic
inclinations of parents and grandparents.
He also assumed that in order for kin
altruism to be stable, the additional
social reinforcements of institutional
marriage and God’s strengthening grace
and forgiveness were also needed. In
addition, he held - and Christianity has
always taught - that Christian love
includes more than kin altruism and the
care of our familial offspring; it must
include the love of neighbor, stranger,
and enemy, even to the point of selfsacrifice.
For the Christian, this was
made possible by the idea that God was
the creator of all humans and hence each
person was a child of God and made in
God’s image (imago dei). For this
reason, as Kant would say on different
grounds, each individual should be
treated “always as an end and never as a
means only.” 26 In Aquinas’s view,
acting on this belief, and with the
empowering grace of God, made it
possible for Christians to build on yet
analogically generalize their kin
altruism to all children of God, even
those beyond the immediate family, their
own children, and their own kin. These
wider assumptions may be beyond the
competence of science to assess. They
entail a step toward metaphysical
speculation of the kind science would do
better to avoid. Nonetheless, in the view
of Christian love developed in Aquinas,
the seeds of a religious humanism – in
this case a Christian humanism –began
to form.
I have tried to illustrate how
insights from Aristotle and Aquinas can
join with insights from evolutionary
psychology and social neuroscience to
refine the Christian understanding of
love. In pursuing this course, I join the
work of Stephen Pope and others in
presenting this option. 27 The kind of
Christian humanism found in Aquinas
makes it possible for Christianity to be
enriched by the modern sciences of
human nature. Aquinas’s view is
strikingly different from Nygren’s
representation of Paul and Luther when
Nygren contends that Christian love does
not build on our own natural energies,
but “has come to us from heaven.” 28 Or
again, it is very different from Nygren’s
view when he writes that the Christian is
“merely the tube, the channel through
which God’s love flows.” 29 The
complete discontinuity in this statement
between the downward love of God and
the natural extension to nonkin of human
kin-altruistic impulses is stunning. And
such a view as Nygren’s precludes the
possibility of a religious humanism of
the kind I have been describing. And it
Page | 38
eliminates the possibility of the
refinements to religious views of human
nature that the conversation between
religion and science can offer.
Conclusion
My argument has been that a
revived religious humanism can come
about through the dialogue between
religion and science, particularly
between religion and the psychological
sciences. I have illustrated this with the
issue of love in Christianity. I believe
my argument could be illustrated with
other religions, especially the Abrahamic
religions of Judaism and Islam. As
Aristotle’s influence created a kind of
religious humanism in these religions in
the past, the broader dialogue between
science and religion may be able to do
this for them in the future.
But the contributions will not
simply flow from science to religion.
Even in this short essay, a question for
science to investigate has arisen. It is
this: how do religious and metaphysical
beliefs extend the impulse of natural kin
altruism, if at all? This goes beyond the
issue of the relation of religion to health.
It raises the question of the relation of
religion to expansive love for the distant
other. This is a good question that
comes from taking the claims of religion
seriously and an example of how
religion can continue to feed and
challenge scientific inquiry.
References
1 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
(Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
2006); Daniel Dennett, Breaking the
God Spell (New York, NY.: Viking,
2006); Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian
Nation (NY.; Alfred Knopf, 2006);
Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great
(NY.: Twelve, 2007).
2 For a discussion of these distinctions
between different forms of
phenomenology, see Paul Ricoeur,
Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), pp. 63-100.
3 Will Deming, Paul on Marriage and
Celibacy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995). Troels Engbert-
Perdersen, Paul and the Stoics
(Louisville, KY,: Westminster John
Knox, 2000).
4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (New
York: Random House, 1941), Bk. VIII,
ch. 10.
5 The Interpreter’s Bible: Luke and John,
Vol. 8 (Nashville, TN.: Abingdon Press,
1952), p. 465.
6 Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo
(Berkeley, CA.: University of California,
1969), p. 178.
7 Richard Rubinstein, Aristotle’s
Children (New York: Harcourt, Inc.,
2003)
8 Edward Scribner Ames, Religion
(Chicago: Holt, 1929).
9 Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros
(Philadelphia, PA.: Westminster Press,
1953).
10 Ibid., p. 57, 121-122.
11 Ibid., p. 101.
12 William Hamilton, “The Genetical
Evolution of Social Behavior, II”
Journal of Theoretical Biology 7
(1964), pp. 17-52.
13 Ronald Fisher and Robert Trivers,
“Parental Investment and Sexual
Selection,” B. Campbell (ed.), Sexual
Page | 39
Selection and the Descent of Man
(Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1972),
p. 139.
14 E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New
Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1975).
15 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
(Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1976).
16 John Cacioppo, “Loneliness:
Conceptualization,” (In press), pp. 4-5.
26 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the
Metaphysics of Morals (New York:
Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1959), p. 49.
27 Stephen Pope, “The Order of Love in
Recent Roman Catholic Ethics, “
Theological Studies 52 (1991), pp. 255-
288.
28 Nygren, Agape and Eros, p. 734.
29
Ibid, p. 735.
17 Ibid., p. 5.
18 John Cacioppo and J. T. Brandon,
“Religious Involvement and Health,”
Psychological Inquiry 13:3 (2002), pp.
??.
19 Larry Arnhart, “Thomistic Natural
Law as Darwinian Natural Right,” Ellen
Frenkel, Fred Miller, Jeffrey Paul (eds.),
Natural Law and Modern Moral
Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), pp. 1-2.
20 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III,
“Supplement,” q., 41.1.
21 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra
Gentiles (London: Burns, Oates, and
Washburn, 1928), 3, ii, p. 115.
22 Aristotle, Politics, Richard McKeon
(ed.) The Basic Works of Aristotle (New
York: Random House, 1941), I, i.
23 Plato, The Republic (New York:
Basic Books, 1968), Bk. 5, pp. 461-
465.
24 Aristotle, Politics, Bk. 2, chpt. 3.
25 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3, ii,
p. 115.
Page | 40
The Status of the Body Politic and the
Status of the Body Itself
In the long history of
conversations between science and
religion, starting points matter. As Don
Browning demonstrates through the
example of Thomas Aquinas, when
religions start with a desire to understand
human behavior, such as the long-term
human commitment between parent and
child, they recognize that science might
illuminate and refine that understanding.
And religion, in turn, might shape social
institutions that not only enhance the
human drive toward social connection
but also imaginatively extend its
influence beyond direct kinship to
influence ethical relations with neighbor
and stranger. By starting with a shared
interest in understanding what Browning
calls “the rudimentary energies of
human morality,” creative conversation
between science and religion thus
prompts a religious humanism, in which
religion partners with science to shape
models of fulfillment for human
sociality.
Like Browning, Louise Hawkley
starts with the human quest for social
connection. As humans mature,
Hawkley observes, they proceed from
childhood dependence not toward
independence but toward
interdependence. But, whereas
Browning pursued the implications of
interdependence for the body politic,
Hawkley wants to know the
consequences of interdependence for the
physical body. Her research focuses on
the interplay between psychological and
physical factors in the human sense of
social connectedness, and Hawkley finds
that “feeling wanted and accepted and
like one belongs are as vital to our
existence as the air we breathe. “ A
robust sense of social connection
reverberates throughout the human body,
and its absence—in loneliness—is likely
to have long-term adverse effects on
personal health.
Page | 41
Chapter 4 4
Health by Connection:
From Social Brains to Resilient Bodies
We enter and leave the world
alone, but at no time do we exist
disconnected from others. The
connection with the mother that begins
4 The lead author is Louise C. Hawkley, Ph.D., a
Senior Research Scientist (Assistant Professor),
member of the Center for Cognitive and Social
Neuroscience, and Associate Director of the
Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University
of Chicago. Her research is concerned with the
interplay of psychological and physiological
factors, and includes the study of autonomic,
neuroendocrine, immune, genetic, and behavioral
processes that contribute to physical and mental
health and well-being in individuals differing in
perceived social connectedness. She has
published numerous articles and chapters on
perceived social isolation (loneliness) and its
antecedents and consequences in young and
aging adults.
Hawkley finds awe in the significance
of what it means to be a social species. Atul
Gawande wrote, “We are social not just in the
trivial sense that we like company, and not just
in the obvious sense that we each depend on
others. We are social in a more elemental way:
simply to exist as a normal human being requires
interaction with other people” (The New Yorker,
March 2009). Hawkley believes that we are
social beings to our cellular core, and even that
does not capture the full extent of our sociality.
For these reasons, she is increasingly
uncomfortable with the term “loneliness,” a term
that is laden with popular definitions and
understandings that only hint at the deeper
significance of our social nature. As she shows,
what the study of loneliness actually reveals is
that feeling wanted and accepted and like one
belongs are as vital to our existence as the air we
breathe. Nothing kills like being denied a
socially meaningful existence.
in utero does not end with the physical
severing of the umbilical cord but
continues in a lengthy dependence on the
mother or primary caregiver(s) for food
and safety. Years are needed for the
infant to reach physical and reproductive
maturation, but as Cacioppo notes, even
more importantly these years are needed
for the infant to develop the social and
emotional skills necessary for survival in
a complex social world. We graduate
from infantile dependence not to
independence but to interdependence
(cooperation, trust, reciprocity, etc.).
That we are born to and for connection
explains why feeling disconnected,
isolated, and like we don’t belong can be
so painful. We call these feelings
loneliness. Feelings of loneliness
function like physical pain or hunger or
thirst; they motivate us to alleviate the
social pain and to repair our sense of
connectedness. This is an important
adaptive function of loneliness because
people who feel connected fare much
better than those who feel disconnected.
They are not only happier but also
healthier than their more lonely
counterparts. As we will see, the power
of felt connectedness reverberates
throughout the human body. As was
aptly stated by Frederick Buechner,
“You can kiss your family and friends
good-bye and put miles between you,
but at the same time you carry them with
you in your heart, your mind, your
stomach, because you do not just live in
a world but a world lives in you.” 1 We
tend to take for granted our sense of
social connectedness, but that should not
blind us to its powerful, albeit invisible,
influence on our lives. Its impact is best
exposed when we observe the effects of
its absence (i.e., loneliness) on physical
and mental health and well-being.
Loneliness is a Health Risk, but How?
Page | 42
For research purposes, loneliness
is typically measured on a continuum
that ranges from not at all lonely (i.e.,
socially connected) to very lonely. It is
informative, however, to get a sense of
the prevalence of loneliness when
assessed as present or absent. Loneliness
is a common experience; as many as 80
percent of people under 18 years of age
and 30 percent of people over 65 years
of age report being lonely at least
sometimes. For most people, feelings of
loneliness are situational and transient
(e.g., geographic relocation). For as
many as 15-30% of the general
population, however, loneliness is a
chronic state, and it is among these
individuals that loneliness wreaks its
greatest havoc. In a study of children
followed through young adulthood,
those who were highly lonely at each of
three measurement occasions (i.e.,
childhood, adolescence, and at 26 years
of age) exhibited a significantly greater
number of standard health risks. The
chronically lonely individuals were more
likely to have higher body mass index
(BMI), elevated blood pressure, higher
levels of total cholesterol, lower levels
of “good” HDL cholesterol, greater
concentrations of glycosylated
hemoglobin (an index of impaired
glucose metabolism), and poorer
respiratory fitness than those who were
lonely at only two or one of the
measurement occasions. 2 In a study of
older adults, loneliness predicted
mortality over a 3-year period, and
increased mortality was explained by the
fact that lonely individuals had more
chronic diseases and functional
limitations. 3 Higher rates of mortality in
lonely individuals do not appear to be
attributable to inadequate healthcare
utilization: even after accounting for the
presence and severity of chronic illness,
lonely individuals are actually more
likely than nonlonely individuals to
make use of health facilities and
physicians. 4
Most chronic diseases (e.g.,
hypertension, coronary artery disease,
diabetes) are the result of the interactive
influences of genetic, environmental,
and behavioral factors on physiological
functioning. How do feelings of
loneliness penetrate to a level that affects
disease risk? Plausible pathways include
poor health behaviors, stress-related
processes, restorative “anti-stress”
processes, and even differences in
patterns of gene activity. In general,
physiological systems exhibit
redundancies and compensatory
processes that minimize the immediate
health effects of adverse heritable,
environmental, and behavioral factors.
However, subtle changes in these
predisease pathways can be detected
prior to the onset of manifest disease and
may indicate the beginnings of a steeper
downward trajectory in resilience. 5
Take health behaviors, for
instance. Major risk factors for disease
in Western society include high-calorie,
high-fat diets, and sedentary lifestyles,
each of which contribute to being
overweight or obese. Feelings of
loneliness have been associated with
greater incidence of these predominantly
lifestyle risk factors. In a large crosssectional
survey of adults 18 years and
older, the lonely group had a higher
mean BMI and a greater proportion of
overweight/obese individuals than did
the nonlonely group. Loneliness has
been associated with lower levels of
physical activity in every age group from
grade school to middle-age adults. In the
latter study, lonely individuals were also
more likely to become inactive over
time. Changes in health status also
Page | 43
predicted an increased likelihood of
becoming inactive, but the effects of
loneliness were independent of changes
in health status. Similarly, individuals
with fewer social connections (i.e., a
smaller social network) were less likely
to be physically active, but the effects of
loneliness on physical activity did not
depend on the size of the social network.
The invisible force of loneliness seems
to play a unique role in this particular
predisease pathway.
Another commonly cited risk
factor for disease is stress. In reality,
“stress” refers to a family of predisease
pathways, each of which may be
vulnerable to the influence of lonely
feelings. Loneliness is itself a source of
stress, but lonely individuals also differ
in their exposure to stressful events and
circumstances. This is less evident in
young adults than it is in older adults in
whom loneliness was associated with
having experienced a greater number of
stressful life events in the past year (e.g.,
death in the family, marital crisis,
change in employment status) and more
sources of chronic stress (e.g.,
employment stress, marital stress). 6 In
addition, lonely individuals perceive life
as more stressful and less gratifying than
their socially connected counterparts,
even when objective indications are that
lonely and nonlonely individuals do not
differ in the types of activities and
behaviors they engage in on a daily
basis. Good quality social interactions
typically ameliorate feelings of stress,
but because lonely people perceive their
interactions to be less positive than those
of nonlonely people, they fail to derive
the same benefit. Good coping strategies
can also ameliorate feelings of stress, but
lonely individuals are more likely to
respond to stress with pessimism and
avoidance than with optimism and active
engagement. And to add insult to injury,
loneliness increases sensitivity to and
surveillance for social threats. Anxiety,
low self-esteem, and fear of negative
evaluation elicit self-defensive behaviors
and effectively tax cognitive resources
that would normally be available to meet
the demands of daily life stress. Thus,
what might naively be thought of as a
circumscribed problem—the feeling of
loneliness and isolation—may be seen
by the sufferer as a world of inescapable
threat. 7 How might these cognitions and
perceptions influence physiology and
health? As Berntson shows in his
chapter, the brain regions involved in
emotional and perceptual processes are
intimately related to brain regions
involved in the regulation of
physiological systems. This is
particularly evident in alterations of the
functioning of the cardiovascular system
in lonely individuals. In young adults,
this alteration is apparent in increased
resistance to blood flow in small arteries
throughout the body. Increased vascular
resistance is a precursor and
predominant contributor to age-related
increases in systolic blood pressure
(SBP), a major risk factor for
cardiovascular disease. In middle-aged
adults, SBP is significantly higher in
lonely adults than in their nonlonely
counterparts. Moreover, loneliness
accelerates the rate of increases in SBP, 8
indicating a faster decline in
physiological resilience and a heightened
risk for chronic cardiovascular disease.
It’s as though loneliness accelerates the
aging process.
By virtue of extensive
interconnections among the brain,
peripheral nervous systems, and
endocrine glands, the feelings of
isolation and loneliness have a broad and
Page | 44
deep reach. The hypothalamus plays a
key role in enabling communication
from brain to periphery. Located in the
lower central region of the brain, the
hypothalamus receives neural input on
brain and body states (e.g., pain,
sadness, fear, hunger) and in response
signals brain regions that control the
autonomic nervous system and the
pituitary and adrenal glands. Signals to
the autonomic nervous system permit
modulation of heart rate, blood pressure,
and numerous other factors that serve to
maintain homeostasis. Signals to the
pituitary gland (located at the base of the
brain, just below the hypothalamus)
prompt the release of hormones that
ultimately permit modulation of almost
every endocrine gland in the body,
including the adrenal glands (one is
situated on top of each kidney). The
adrenal glands serve many functions,
and one is to produce and secrete
cortisol. Cortisol is frequently referred to
as a “stress hormone” because
circulating levels increase dramatically
in response to any stimulus that requires,
or might require, metabolic resources.
Thus, cortisol increases blood sugar
levels, increases blood pressure, and
reduces immune responses and
inflammation (hence the use of cortisone
cream or injections to control
inflammation of the skin after exposure
to poison ivy). This complex web of
physiological links may seem far
removed from feelings of social
isolation, but loneliness has repeatedly
been observed to be a risk factor for
elevated levels of cortisol, especially in
the morning. For instance, in middleaged
adults, the more intense the degree
of loneliness reported at day’s end over
the course of three days in everyday life,
the higher the spike in cortisol the
subsequent morning. The conundrum is
that loneliness is associated with
increased risk of chronic conditions that
are characterized by heightened
inflammation (e.g., atherosclerosis,
elevated cholesterol levels, heart disease,
diabetes, and even cognitive
impairment). If cortisol dampens
inflammation, why might elevated levels
of cortisol in lonely individuals be
associated with more rather than less
inflammation?
It turns out that communication
among the hypothalamus, pituitary
gland, and adrenal glands becomes
dysregulated when chronically
stimulated. Whereas cortisol effectively
dampens immune and inflammatory
responses on an acute basis, when
circulating cortisol levels are chronically
elevated, cells become resistant to its
immunosuppressant and antiinflammatory
effects. This alteration
happens at the level of DNA where the
actions of genes in each cell of our body
can be turned on (i.e., expressed) or off.
Recent evidence suggests that the effects
of loneliness reach down to this level.
Circulating leukocytes (white blood
cells) from a small group of chronically
lonely adults showed decreased
expression of glucocorticoid response
genes relative to expression rates in a
matched group of socially connected
adults. These genes are important
because they activate the production of
proteins that “hear” the antiinflammatory
signal sent by cortisol.
Thus, despite higher levels of circulating
cortisol in the lonely group, the cortisol
signal may still not be heard. The lonely
group also showed increased expression
of genes carrying pro-inflammatory
elements which, together with reduced
expression of glucocorticoid response
genes, provides a functional genomic
explanation for elevated risk of
Page | 45
inflammatory disease in individuals who
experience chronically high levels of
loneliness. 9
The effects of loneliness are not
limited to an increase in healththreatening
processes. Loneliness has
also been associated with a decrease in
health-restoring processes. Sleep is the
quintessential example. Much of what
feels stressful and depressing at the end
of a long day is perceived differently
following a good night’s sleep. Good
quality sleep is the clincher. Lonely and
non-lonely individuals do not differ in
the amount of sleep they get, but lonely
people have poorer sleep quality than do
non-lonely people. They experience
more micro-awakenings during the night
and they awake feeling more tired and
less capable of meeting the demands of
the day. Poor sleep has been associated
with elevated blood pressure and
cardiovascular mortality, and this may
help to explain the poorer health
outcomes of chronically lonely
individuals. In short, lonely days extend
into the nights and lessen the restorative
nature of sleep.
Loneliness and Health: It’s Not Just
Peripheral
From this sampling of the
widespread effects of loneliness on
health, lifestyle behaviors, physiological
functioning, genetic transcription, and
sleep quality, it should be clear that the
invisible power of felt isolation has long
tentacles that have the potential to
influence all of physiology. Not only
physical health, but also cognitive health
is compromised. Indeed, one of the most
sobering findings of recent years is that
loneliness places people at risk for
impaired cognition and dementia. 10 In a
4-year prospective study of initially
dementia-free older adults, the risk of
Alzheimer’s Disease was more than
twice as great in lonely than in
nonlonely individuals. In addition,
loneliness was associated with lower
cognitive ability at baseline and with a
more rapid decline in cognition during
the 4-year follow-up. Similar results
were reported for a sample of 75-85-
year-old individuals over a 10-year
follow-up.
The effects of loneliness on
cognition are evident at an even more
fundamental level. 11 Self-regulation, or
the ability to regulate one’s attention,
cognition, emotion, and/or behavior to
better meet social standards or personal
goals, is impaired in lonely individuals.
For instance, among young adults,
instructions to shift auditory attention
from the dominant right ear to the nondominant
left ear resulted in impaired
performance in lonely relative to
nonlonely individuals. Loneliness also
alters emotion regulation. In middleaged
and older adults, loneliness was
associated with a diminished tendency to
capitalize on positive emotions, and this
explained why lonely individuals were
less likely than nonlonely individuals to
engage in physical activity. Impaired
cognitive regulation is evident in
experimental studies that manipulate
feelings of isolation. Participants who
receive feedback that induces a sense
that they are doomed to a future of social
isolation perform significantly worse on
tests of reasoning, behave more
aggressively, and choose more tasty but
unhealthy foods than other participants
who receive feedback indicating a future
of social connection or bad feedback of a
non-social nature, namely that their
future will consist of general
misfortune. 12 There seems to be
something uniquely threatening about
the prospect, and the reality, of feeling
Page | 46
isolated, disconnected, and like one
doesn’t belong.
In terms of emotional health, the
prospect for lonely people is increasing
misery, at least over the short term.
Loneliness and depressed affect tend to
be thought of as synonymous, but the
two are conceptually and empirically
distinct. If loneliness and depression
were synonymous, increases in
loneliness would have no capacity to
predict increases in depressive
symptoms because increases in one
would be exactly paralleled by increases
in the other. Instead, longitudinal data
have shown that loneliness predicts an
increase in depressive symptoms but
depressive symptoms do not predict an
increase in loneliness over a one-year
interval. 13 Importantly, the influence of
loneliness on depressive symptoms was
not attributable to fewer social
connections, general negativity, stress,
or poor social support. These data
suggest that the relevant intervention
target is loneliness, and that modifying
the cognitions, perceptions, and
expectations of the lonely individual
could help improve quality of life and
overall well-being.
Social Connectedness: Invisible Forces
Made Visible
At this juncture, having become
acquainted with the burden of loneliness,
it is helpful to remember that most
people, most of the time, feel socially
connected. They derive satisfaction and
meaning from their social relationships,
and this makes them happier and more
satisfied with life. Interestingly,
happiness leads to higher levels of
relationship satisfaction, indicating that
happiness and relationship satisfaction
feed forward to foster spirals of
increasing happiness and relationship
satisfaction. The general positivity that
ensues from happiness is also apparent
in the effects of happiness on income.
Happiness predicted increases in
household income over a 2-year period
in middle-aged adults. However,
relationship satisfaction also predicted
increases in household income over this
time period and, remarkably,
relationship satisfaction helped to
explain the effect of happiness on
income. It seems that happy people
experience increases in income in part
because of the general good will that
surrounds the socially contented
individual and that elicits tangible and
intangible positivity from others.
It is perhaps precisely because
most people feel socially connected and
happy that we take for granted the
invisible force of social connectedness
and its stabilizing and nurturing
influence in all aspects of life. Only in
its absence do we begin to comprehend
its power. Western notions of the
autonomous individual notwithstanding,
human beings are “wired” for social
connections and need social bonds to
feel safe, valued, motivated, and
competent. 14 Among the lamentations
expressed by some in Western societies
is a concern that our autonomy and
independence come at the expense of
meaningful social relationships and a
sense of belonging to a larger social unit.
Family members are no longer
obligatorily part of our social
community, while Facebook friends,
some of whom we know only through
electronic media, are deemed essential to
fulfilling our need for a sense of
connectedness and belonging. 15 The
broadening of our social worlds has not
been accompanied by maintenance,
much less improvement, of the quality of
our social relationships. One national
study showed a threefold increase
Page | 47
between 1985 and 2004 in the number of
Americans who reported no one with
whom to discuss important matters. 16
We are a meaning-making species, and
relationships that offer security, comfort,
trust, and pleasure, even if interactions
are relatively infrequent, are much more
effective at fostering a sense of
connectedness and belonging than are
more friends or more frequent
interactions that fail to meet these
standards. The challenge, especially for
those of us who live in Western society,
is to recognize that the invisible force of
social connectedness has benefits for
health and well-being that we ignore at
our peril.
Conclusion
The research on loneliness
highlights the need for and benefits of
human connections, but it speaks even
more directly to the role of beliefs about
our connections. Loneliness, after all, is
not about how many social relationships
a person has, but is about a belief that
the existing social relationships fail to
satisfy a desired sense of social
connectedness. All human relationships
have a tangible existence in physical
interactions and an invisible existence in
mental representations and beliefs. This
human capacity expands the range of
possible relationships. For instance,
humans form meaningful connections
with pets, with television characters
whom they have never met, and with
deities who lack a material existence.
We have seen the health impact of the
invisible force of loneliness; do different
kinds of invisible forces have different
effects?
References
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Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy,
Comedy, and Fairy Tale (p. 3).
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Moffitt, T.E., Milne, B.J., &
Poulton, R. (2006). Socially
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Archives of Pediatric Adolescent
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3. Sugisawa, H., Liang, J., & Liu,
X. (1994). Social networks,
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5. Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J.
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6. Hawkley, L. C., Hughes, M. E.,
Waite, L., J., Masi, C. M.,
Thisted, R. A., & Cacioppo, J. T.
(2008). From social structural
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7. Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, B.
(2008). Loneliness: Human
nature and the need for social
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8. Hawkley, L. C., Thisted, R. A.,
Masi, C. M., & Cacioppo, J. T.
Page | 48
(under review). Loneliness
predicts increased blood
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9. Cole, S. W., Hawkley, L. C.,
Arevalo, J. M., Sung, C. Y.,
Rose, R. M., & Cacioppo, J. T.
(2007). Social regulation of gene
expression in humans:
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Arnold, S. E., Schneider, J. A.,
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(2007). Loneliness and risk of
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240.
11. Cacioppo, J. T., & Hawkley, L.
C. (2009). Perceived social
isolation and cognition. Trends in
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12. Baumeister, R.F., DeWall, C. N.,
Ciarocco, N. J., & Twenge, J. M.
(2005). Social exclusion impairs
self-regulation. Journal of
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88, 589-604; Twenge, J.M.,
Baumeister, R. F., Tice, D. M., &
Stucke, T. S. (2001). If you can't
join them, beat them: Effects of
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& Thisted, R. (2009). Perceived
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(2007). Evolution in the social
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71, 353-375.
Page | 49
From Relationships to People and
Groups to Relationships with God
The extent and quality of our
social connections can have profound
consequences for our physical wellbeing.
In her essay, Louise Hawkley
explores in particular the consequences
that feelings of inadequate social
connection have on such physical
outcomes as sleep quality, high blood
pressure, reduced ability to respond to
inflammation, cognitive health in aging,
and cardiovascular health. While
Hawkley emphasizes the relationship
between the invisible forces of social
connection and health and the biological
mechanisms responsible for this
relationship, Gary Berntson takes things
one step further by exploring a person’s
perceived connection with God and its
effects on our basic biological systems.
Many of our basic biological processes,
such as breathing or maintaining
sufficient blood pressure to oxygenate
the brain, are reflexes that are so
automatic that they become invisible to
us. Berntson shows that thoughts and
beliefs alter not only behaviors, but also
the regulation of these reflex-like
mechanisms. And he suggests that the
root of these effects may lie in the way
that humans and other animals maintain
biological equilibrium with regulatory
mechanisms that, under ordinary
circumstances, keep each other in check.
This theory describes a biological
mechanism that could explain why
spirituality is associated with generally
better health.
Page | 50
Chapter 5 5
Psychosomatic Relations: From
Superstition to Mortality
People have many sources of
information, knowledge and
5 The lead author is Gary G. Berntson, Ph.D., a
Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and
Pediatrics and a member of the Neurosciences
Graduate Faculty at the Ohio State University.
He is a co-founder (with John Cacioppo) of the
field of social neuroscience, is a co-editor of the
Handbook of Psychophysiology and the
Handbook of Neuroscience for the Behavioral
Sciences, and is the President of the Society for
Psychophysiological Research. Berntson’s
research focuses on the evolutionary
development of the neuraxis, with special regard
to levels of organization in neurobehavioral
systems, affective processes and autonomic
regulation. He has published over 200 articles in
scientific outlets and six books.
Berntson begins with the fact that
knowledge, thoughts and beliefs can influence
our behaviors. Behaviors, of course, are
physiological processes entailing neural
operations and muscular actions. Here we see a
clear intersection between the psychological
domain on the one hand (knowledge, thoughts
and beliefs) and the physical domain
(neuromuscular effector systems) on the other.
But mind-body relations extend beyond the
observable actions or skeletal muscles. The mind
and its organ, the brain, also impact powerfully
on internal bodily functions associated with the
autonomic nervous system, the endocrine
system, and the immune system, to name just a
few. Through these interactions, psychological
processes can be translated in outcomes that have
powerful significance for adaptation and health.
Berntson explores the processes by which
thoughts can manifest in fundamental changes in
internal physiology and health.
understanding. We consider the most
common of these to be empirically
acquired, learned facts, relations,
associations, and perceptual and motor
skills. Such learned associations serve as
powerful determinants of thought and
behavior. But other sources of
information and knowledge also affect
our interaction with the environment,
including reflex-like (constitutionally
endowed) circuits that are independent
of explicit learning. Examples include
central networks for pain withdrawal,
hunger circuits for the ingestion of
essential nutrients, social affiliation
networks, and neural systems that
promote maternal bonding. Each of
these sources of information or
knowledge can impact thoughts and
beliefs, and thoughts and beliefs can
impact behaviors and other bodily
functions.
“…a Maori woman who,
having eaten some fruit, was told that it
had been taken
from a tabooed place; she
exclaimed that the sanctity of the chief
had been profaned
and that his spirit would kill
her … the next day … she was
dead.”(1)
“I have seen a strong young
man die …. the same day he was tapued
(tabooed); the victims die
under it as though their strength ran out
as water. . . ”(1)
A superstition is a belief, based
not on reason or knowledge, but on
legend, magical thinking, or other nonrational
basis. Beliefs color the way we
perceive the world, they direct and shape
our actions, and define our personalities.
Beliefs are powerful determinants of
action. A useful illustration of the power
of beliefs comes from the parable of the
Page | 51
Sultan (who had studied psychology)
and his “lie-detecting” donkey. Lore has
it that the Sultan was missing a valuable
vase from his estate and suspected that
one of his servants had stolen the piece.
To identify the culprit, the Sultan
gathered his servants in front of a dark
room in which a donkey was tied, and
then asked each of his servants if they
had stolen the item. Each said “no”. The
Sultan explained that inside the room
was a magical donkey, specially trained
to detect liars, who would bray when
slapped by someone who had lied. The
servants were sent into the room, one by
one, and were instructed to close the
door, slap the donkey and return. “When
the donkey brays,” the Sultan
proclaimed, “I will have my culprit”.
The first servant was sent into the room
and returned shortly thereafter--
tremendously relieved as the donkey had
not brayed. One by one, the remaining
servants entered the room and returned.
The donkey had not brayed and all the
servants looked quite relaxed. The
Sultan was sanguine -- he knew this
donkey never brayed under any
circumstances. The Sultan asked the
servants to show him their hands. He
then pointed to one of them and declared
“we have our thief,” instructing the
guards to take him away. How had he
identified the culprit? Rather than
relying on a magical donkey, the Sultan,
who recall was a student of psychology,
took a more rational approach.
Understanding the impact of beliefs on
behavior, the Sultan had surreptitiously
infiltrated powdered charcoal into the
donkey’s hair. When the servants
slapped the donkey, the charcoal marked
their hands—with the exception of the
guilty servant who had not slapped the
donkey, out of a belief and associated
fear that the donkey could detect a liar!
Power of Beliefs
Beliefs may be potent
determinants of behavior, but can they
kill? And if so, how? How can these
invisible, intangible entities impact
health? In a now classic article published
in the American Anthropologist in 1942,
Walter Cannon, a leading Harvard
physiologist and expert on the
autonomic nervous system, proposed an
answer (1). Investigating phenomena
such as voodoo practices of the Haitians
and “bone-pointing” among Australian
aborigines, Cannon found a common
feature among the victims of such rituals
was a strong belief in the curse and an
associated morbid fear of the outcome.
That fear, he argued, could trigger a
“fight-or-flight reaction” (a phrase he
had earlier coined), characterized by
powerful and exaggerated activation of
the sympathetic nervous system. The
resulting vascular constriction
diminishes blood flow to critical tissues
(i.e., ischemia), with consequent hypoxia
(decreased oxygen) and disturbances in
normal metabolism and cellular
function. These reactions may be
exacerbated by the lack of food and
water as the victim “pines away.”
Cannon argued that these reactions could
become life-threatening—fulfilling the
gruesome legacy of the ritual—based on
a belief in the supernatural, the veracity
of which is largely irrelevant. More
relevant is the emotion triggered by the
belief, specious as it may be.
Beliefs and emotions have
consequences, both behavioral and
physiological. A recent example comes
from the contemporary medical
literature. There is now a welldocumented
condition, sometimes
triggered by something as innocuous as a
spousal argument or a surprise birthday
party, which entails the hallmark clinical
Page | 52
and physiological features of a heart
attack, including chest pain,
abnormalities on the electrocardiogram,
and elevated cardiac enzymes (reflecting
damaged heart muscle) (2). The
condition has variously been termed
takotsubo cardiomyopathy, leftventricular
apical ballooning,
myocardial stunning, stress
cardiomyopathy, or in the more
vernacular parlance of the New York
Times, broken heart syndrome
(prompted by a medical review that was
published just before Valentine’s Day).
In general accord with the speculation of
Cannon, broken heart syndrome appears
to be triggered by an exaggerated
autonomic nervous system response,
characterized by sympathetic activation
and high levels of the stress hormone
epinephrine (adrenalin) (3). It is
important to note in these cases that
psychological states, as mild as they may
be, are able to induce a clear and
demonstrable organ pathology.
Physiological abnormalities or
dysfunctions underlie medical
conditions, and indeed, constitute the
defining features of disease states. An
important question, however, is how
those dysfunctions come to be. There are
many ways in which disease develops –
traumatic injuries, biotic infections,
degenerative conditions – and the list
goes on. The fields of psychophysiology,
psychosomatic or behavioral medicine,
and health psychology are particularly
concerned with how psychological and
behavioral factors impact physiological
systems and thus health. Of particular
interest are those psychological
dimensions that uniquely impact
physiology.
An example comes from the
study of Herpes Simplex viral infections.
Herpes Simplex viruses are responsible
for cold sores (HSV type I) and genital
herpes (HSV type II). Once contracted,
herpes virus infections generally remain
for life, although they are characterized
by periodic eruptions and remissions.
During the latter, the immune system
effectively dampens viral activity and
the virus retreat to a more or less
dormant state. Although multiple factors
likely contribute to the reactivation of
HSV, one trigger appears to be stress—
the defacing cold sore that erupts, for
example, just before the prom or an
important date. Ohio State researchers
sought an animal model of this
reactivation, so the underlying links and
mediators could be studied. Try as they
might, however, the research group was
unable to reactivate HSV infections in
mice with standard laboratory stressors,
such as restraint-stress or shock. In a
collaborative effort, we pointed out that
the stressors that lead to HSV
reactivation in humans were often of a
social nature. Indeed, for both humans
and mice, social relations are central to
happiness, adaptation and even survival.
In light of this, a social stressor was
introduced into the project (changing the
housing groupings and thus disrupting
established social relations). The social
stress, but again not physical stressors,
resulted in significant HSV reactivation
(4). Psychological factors, and in this
case a specific social psychological
variable, uniquely impacted an important
aspect of viral immunity. This early
finding led to a series of studies that
have elucidated physiological pathways
that mediate the relationship between
social stress, immune function and HSV
reactivation. But, what is it that makes
social stress unique and distinct from
physical stressors?
We have identified a probable
general contributor to the differences
Page | 53
between lower-level physical or
homeostatic challenges and higher-level
psychological and social stressors. Basic
homeostatic reflexes, reflexes that keep
in balance various critical bodily
processes such as blood pressure, body
temperature, and blood sugar, are largely
hard-wired and organized at relatively
low levels of the nervous system, such as
the brainstem and spinal cord. An
example comes from autonomic nervous
system regulation of cardiovascular
function. The sympathetic division of the
autonomic nervous system is an
activational, energy mobilization system
that comes into play in the face of
adaptive challenges. Sympathetic
activation increases heart rate and results
in peripheral vasoconstriction, both of
which tend to increase blood pressure. In
contrast, the parasympathetic division is
an energy-conserving, deactivational
brake that generally opposes the
sympathetic system, yielding decreases
in heart rate and blood pressure. The
baroreceptor heart rate reflex is a
homeostatic reflex that functions to
maintain blood pressure within
homeostatic limits. Unique pressure
sensitive receptors in the heart and large
arteries detect changes in blood pressure,
and a decrease in blood pressure triggers
the baroreceptor heart rate reflex,
increasing sympathetic activity and
reciprocally decreasing parasympathetic
tone. Both effects serve to increase heart
rate (and thus cardiac output) and
constrict arteries throughout the body,
thereby restoring the pressure
perturbation. In basic reflexes, the two
autonomic branches are generally
regulated in this reciprocal fashion, and
thus synergistically amplify the effects
of the other. This is a useful mechanism
to adjust to severe adaptive challenges
such as a decrease in blood pressure and
compromised circulation.
Although this reciprocal mode of
regulation of the autonomic branches has
considerable utility, and is characteristic
of basic reflex organizations, it may not
always be optimal. The autonomic
nervous system provides the basic
support for action and adjustment, and
although it figures prominently in
survival related functions, it also
provides the basic visceral support for
emotional and cognitive operations as
well. It has long been recognized that
cognitively demanding tasks elicit
greater autonomic activation than is
needed to meet the metabolic demands
of the tasks. Moreover, ascending neural
signals to the brain from visceral organs
such as the heart and blood vessels serve
to modulate and regulate cognitive
activities (5). The notable early
psychologist, William James, proposed
that emotion is the experience of
somatovisceral sensory feedback. James
suggested that we do not run from the
bear because we are afraid, but rather we
are afraid because we run from the bear
(6). Although the strong form of this
theory has not been supported, it remains
the case that ascending visceral signals
can modulate learning, attention, and
cortical/cognitive processing (5). The
autonomic nervous system is not only
for lower level reflexive adjustments.
Indeed, it is increasingly recognized that
there is a highly complex, even intricate,
interaction between the autonomic
nervous system and higher level brain
structures (e.g., frontal cortex) involved
in human behavior. Importantly, these
circuits and their interactions with the
autonomic nervous system are highly
flexible and are not constrained by the
simple organization rules that govern
basal functions such as homeostasis and
Page | 54
reciprocal control of the autonomic
branches. Rather, higher level systems
engage in highly sophisticated “banter”
with the autonomic nervous system.
In contrast to the reciprocal
control characteristic of autonomic
reflexes, higher level brain circuits exert
more flexible control over the autonomic
nervous system. This can include the
classic reciprocal control pattern, but can
also include an independent control
pattern in which only the sympathetic
branch or only the parasympathetic
branch of the autonomic nervous system
is activated, and a coactive control
pattern in which both branches are
activated. This greater flexibility in
control may have behavioral and health
significance.
Beliefs about One’s Relationship with
God and Autonomic Functioning
Recently, we used a populationbased
sample of 50-68-year-old adults in
the Chicago Health, Aging and Social
Relations Study to examine risk factors
for heart attack, a health outcome known
to be influenced the autonomic nervous
system. We were particularly interested
in whether spirituality influenced risk for
heart attack. With very few exceptions,
everyone in our sample expressed a
belief in God. However, individuals
differed in how they perceived the
quality of their relationship with God,
much as individuals differ in how they
perceive the quality of their relationships
with other people. We defined
spirituality as the degree to which a
personal relationship with God was
believed to offer safety, security,
contentment, and love. One observation
that emerged from this study was that
spirituality was associated with a lower
incidence of heart attack (7). This
remained true after ruling out the effects
of demographics, health behaviors, body
mass index, blood pressure, and other
potential explanatory factors. Short of
divine intervention, was there a rational
explanation for this relationship? We
certainly know that psychological factors
can impact autonomic control, among
other aspects of physiology.
As considered above, when
extreme or prolonged, sympathetic
activation may have harmful
consequences. Heightened sympathetic
activation is known, for example, to
predict a poorer outcome after heart
attack. In contrast, parasympathetic
activity may have beneficial or
protective effects. From the perspective
of a reciprocal model of autonomic
control, high parasympathetic/low
sympathetic control would be optimal
whereas high sympathetic/low
parasympathetic control would be
considered a risk. But we also know that
higher level neurobehavioral systems
may not be constrained to reciprocal
autonomic controls. Moreover, it has
been argued that more autonomic control
is better than little control, in that if
affords greater capacity for adjustment
of visceral functions. Could high levels
of parasympathetic control, for example,
mitigate the negative effects of
sympathetic activation and perhaps yield
an even more advantageous health
outcome?
To examine these questions, we
developed two quantitative measures of
autonomic control (7). The first was a
common metric of autonomic balance
(Cardiac Autonomic Balance), which
represents the relative dominance of the
two branches along a single autonomic
continuum that ranges from purely
parasympathetic control to purely
sympathetic control. This metric is
consistent with the classical model of
Page | 55
reciprocal control, characteristic of
reflex processes, where autonomic
balance can be biased toward one or the
other of the autonomic branches. High
scores indicate sympathetic dominance
and low scores parasympathetic
dominance. Independent estimates of
sympathetic and parasympathetic control
were obtained using standard
measurement procedures, and the level
of parasympathetic control was
subtracted from sympathetic control to
derive a measure of Cardiac Autonomic
Balance. A second metric was designed
to capture an alternative mode of
autonomic control (Cardiac Autonomic
Regulation) that assesses the degree of
relative coactivation (rather than
reciprocal activation) of both branches.
This is a metric that taps into the nonreciprocal
regulatory influences of
higher neural structures. Cardiac
Autonomic Regulation scores were
derived by essentially summing
activities of the sympathetic and
parasympathetic branches to afford a
measure of total overall autonomic
cardiac control. High scores indicate
high activation and low scores indicate
low activation of both branches of the
autonomic nervous system.
In the 50-68-year-old adults in
our sample, spirituality was found to be
associated not only with a lower
incidence of heart attack, but a higher
level of Cardiac Autonomic Regulation.
That is, people who felt closer in their
relationship with God exhibited higher
overall autonomic regulation—both
sympathetic and parasympathetic. This
was associated, in part, with lesser
diminution of parasympathetic control
and a greater degree of coactivation.
Moreover, Cardiac Autonomic
Regulation (but not Cardiac Autonomic
Balance) predicted better overall health
status and was associated with a lower
incidence of heart attack. Participants
who had low Cardiac Autonomic
Regulation were more likely to have
suffered from a heart attack.
Could higher Cardiac Autonomic
Regulation scores explain why
spirituality was associated with less risk
for heart attack? That is, could a pattern
of autonomic regulation associated with
spirituality explain the link between
spirituality and heart attack? In order to
address this question, we conducted
statistical tests of these linkages. As we
already knew, both spirituality and
Cardiac Autonomic Regulation are
associated with a lower incidence of
heart attack. When the predictive effects
of spirituality were statistically
extracted, Cardiac Autonomic
Regulation continued to be a significant
predictor of a lower incidence of heart
attack. However, when the linkage test
was reversed and the effects of Cardiac
Autonomic Regulation were extracted,
spirituality was no longer a significant
predictor. This indicates that Cardiac
Autonomic Regulation is a plausible
mediator that may explain the
relationship between spirituality and
heart attack.
By capturing higher levels of
parasympathetic control and the
associated autonomic coactivation of the
sympathetic and parasympathetic
branches, Cardiac Autonomic
Regulation provided a critical metric that
permitted the study of a previously
“invisible” and mysterious link between
spirituality and health outcomes. This in
no way diminishes the relationship
between spirituality and health, but
rather offers an important hypothesis as
to how spirituality may impact
physiology and health status. Spirituality
reflects an important aspect of the
Page | 56
general domain of sociality and social
relationships, a domain heavily
influenced by our genetic constitution as
a social species. Indeed, the importance
of sociality may be more related to
beliefs and attitudes about the
meaningfulness of relationships than
their existence or number. And again,
beliefs about social relationships also
have real consequences.
Conclusion
Beliefs impact thoughts and
actions. This may be reflected in
phenomena as diverse as biasing a
behavioral disposition (such as slapping
a donkey), coloring our perception of the
environment, or determining how we
perceive the quality of our social
(including spiritual) relations.
Psychology can also impact physiology,
and physiology, in turn, can influence
our thoughts and emotions.
Psychophysiology is the study of these
relationships, and promises to illuminate
the intricacies of psychosomatic
relations and the heretofore “invisible”
mechanisms that mediate these links.
The relations between the mind and the
body, the so-called mind-body problem,
are complex and still rather obscure.
Nevertheless, the mind-body problem is
yielding to science, and the problem it
poses is progressively diminishing.
Among the components of the mindbody
problem yielding to rigorous
scientific inquiry are the effects of
spiritual beliefs including feelings of
closeness to God.
References
1. Cannon, W.B. (1942). “Voodoo”
death. American Anthropologist, 44
(new series), 169-181.
2. Wittstein, I.S. (2007). The broken
heart syndrome. Cleve Clin J Med, 74,
Suppl 1, S17-22.
3. Wittstein, I.S., Thiemann, D.R., Lima,
J.A., Baughman, K.L., Schulman, S.P.,
Gerstenblith, G., Wu, K.C., Rade, J.J.,
Bivalacqua, T.J., & Champion, H.C.
(2005). Neurohumoral features of
myocardial stunning due to sudden
emotional stress. N Engl J Med, 352,
539-48.
4. Padgett, D. A., Sheridan, J. F., Dorne,
J., Berntson, G. G., Candelora, J., &
Glaser, R. (1998). Social stress and the
reactivation of latent herpes simplex
virus-type 1. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 95, 7231-
7235.
5. Berntson, G. G., Sarter, M. &
Cacioppo, J. T. (2003). Ascending
visceral regulation of cortical affective
information processing. European
Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 2103-2109.
6. James, W. (1884). What is an
emotion? Mind, 9, 188-205.
7. Berntson, G. G., Norman, G.,
Hawkley, L., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008).
Spirituality and autonomic
cardiovascular control. Annals of
Behavioral Medicine, 35, 198-208.
8. Berntson, G. G., Norman, G. J.,
Hawkley, L. C. & Cacioppo, J. T.
(2008). Cardiac Autonomic Balance vs.
Cardiac Regulatory Capacity.
Psychophysiology, 45, 643-652.
Page | 57
The Mind and Body Are One
The Cartesian view of the mind
as distinct from the body persists in
twenty-first century discourse as the
mind-body problem alluded to by Gary
Berntson. Berntson provides evidence
that the mind and the body, psychology
and physiology, are not independent of
each other but represent different levels
of organization of human organisms.
Beliefs influence thoughts, behaviors,
and physiology, and peripheral
physiological processes signal central
neural networks that influence
cognitions and feelings crucial for the
generation and moderation of beliefs.
Spiritual beliefs are considered by some
to be contentious candidates for
scientific examination, yet Berntson
argues that spiritual beliefs can be
identified, measured, and subjected to
scientific investigation in the same
fashion as any other belief or invisible
force. Accordingly, Berntson examines
the effects of a specific spiritual belief –
the belief that one has a close personal
relationship with God. As documented
by Berntson, this belief is associated
with rather profound physiological and
health effects.
Whereas Berntson focuses on the
influence of the mind on the body and
vice versa, Gün Semin speaks of the
mind in the body and, more specifically,
in several bodies simultaneously. In his
social cognition model, Semin
challenges the limits of individual social
cognition and argues that regulation and
co-regulation of social behavior are
distributed across brains. When several
individuals exhibit spontaneous
synchronized behaviors (e.g., handclapping),
the human tendency is to
invoke a “supra-individual” explanation.
Semin describes a mechanism by which
the supra-individual source can be
explained as shared motor
representations and ongoing monitoring
of observed actions that, under certain
conditions, lead to dissolution of the
boundary between self and other. The
resulting shared experience of unity and
collective identity may feel
transcendental, but the mechanisms are
as real and explicable as those governing
individual behaviors and experiences.
Page | 58
Chapter 6 6
The Suspension of Individual
Consciousness and
The Dissolution of Self and Other
Boundaries
When we watch a group of
soldiers marching in formation, we see
the behavior of the group synchronized.
Although we can make out the
6 The lead author is Gün R. Semin, Ph.D., an
Academy Professor, Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences, at Utrecht
University, The Netherlands. He is the founding
Scientific Director of the Kurt Lewin Graduate
School , a past president of the European
Association of Experimental Social Psychology,
and the Chair of the International Committee of
the Association for Psychological Science.
Semin’s research is primarily driven by an
interest in communication, social cognition as
jointly recruited process, and language and the
diverse uses that language can be put to in social
interaction (ranging from the regulation of
prejudice to that of interpersonal relationships)
as well as the embodied grounding of meaning
and communication.
A puzzle that has occupied Semin much
of his career is how it is possible to understand
social behavior by explaining individual
processes. Another puzzle has been why one
should focus on stills when human behavior is a
movie: behavior is self evidently dynamic and
highly responsive to contextual variations.
Finally, Semin has been puzzled by how it is
possible to think that all there might be to
psychological processes is some symbolic
computation taking place somewhere between
the ears. As outlined in this essay, he has come
to conceptualize the social in terms of jointly
recruited processes rather than individual ones,
social behavior as situated, and psychological
processes as embodied.
individual within the group, the group
seems to be an entity of its own and the
individual soldier seems to have become
a cog in the social machine. Mob
behavior, crowds at sporting events, and
soldiers in formation all suggest that
when we are organized to act together,
the group becomes an emergent entity
that can submerge the sense of the
individual self. This apparent social
absorption stands in contrast to our
typical experience of being autonomous,
self-aware agents in the world. The
dissolution of the boundary between the
self and the group is one manifestation
of the social brain and the mechanisms
that support our ability to connect with
others.
Although not everyone has the
experience of marching in a band or
running with a mob, most people have
been part of an audience at a concert or
play. At the end of a particularly
thrilling performance, an audience can
be moved spontaneously as a group to
clap wildly. In these situations, we
know the feeling of surging to our feet as
a collective, hands clapping and faces
beaming with approval. As the clapping
blooms, individual clappers merge into a
synchronized unit. 1, 2 Similarly,
thousands of individual sports fans have
been observed to stand and raise their
hands in a synchronized fashion to
produce a collective wave that travels
around the stadium. In both cases,
individual people act as a collective unit,
a superorganismal structure, with
capacities and behaviors beyond the
reach of any single individual in the
group.
These examples are instances of
behavioral uniformity in large groups.
What is distinctive about these examples
is that the observed behavioral
synchrony can be understood in terms of
Page | 59
a shared social goal. Sometimes the goal
is spontaneous as in clapping to
demonstrate appreciation and sometimes
the goal is imposed by the situation (e.g.,
musicians following a musical score and
instructions of a conductor, soldiers
marching to the call of a drill sergeant).
However, when we behave in synchrony
with others, there is a sense of becoming
part of something larger than ourselves.
To the people engaged in
spontaneously synchronized behavior,
there is a clearly identifiable and
seemingly individual ‘cause’ for their
emergent behavior. But when a group
shares the same goal—demonstrating
approval—and engages in the same
action—clapping—the stage is set for
such behavior to become coordinated
and organized even without an external
agent (conductor or drill sergeant). How
do those moments of spontaneous social
aggregation occur? How does the social
brain work to join with others to form
the emergent group?
We have begun to understand the
underlying dynamics of how and when
such phenomena are likely to occur and
even how such phenomena can be
potentially engineered. New insights
afforded by developments in social
psychology, developmental psychology,
and social neuroscience have suggested
the way in which our brains respond to
the invisible force of social connection.
These scientific developments suggest
neural mechanisms that may be
important to the way we interact with
others. At the same time, the insights
also reveal the likely conditions under
which individual self merges into the
group. Such situations when the sense of
self is suspended contrast sharply with
the modern Western notion of the
individual standing apart from others.
Indeed, the traditional Western focus on
individual-centered reasons, motives,
intentions, and causes may be at odds
with some forms of spontaneously
synchronized behaviors and group
action.
Towards a Biology of Social
Interaction
Consider the perspective of an
engaged spectator at a singles tennis
match. Although we may be sitting
distant from competitors, if we identify
with one of the players we are not
merely passive observers. On the
contrary, our observation of the events in
the game can serve to activate some of
the same neural mechanisms that would
be active if we were playing the game
rather than just observing it. We can feel
the moves, feel the impetus to defend an
attack, and feel the urge to slam the ball
as if we ourselves are playing, albeit
without actually flailing our arms
around. We may even anticipate a move
by the opponent and imagine ourselves
making the potential response. Research
over the last 10 years or so has revealed
that our brains can map the movements
of other human beings onto our own
bodies almost as if we were making
those movements 3 . This ability to put
ourselves in another person’s shoes
makes it possible to identify with either
player.
By comparison to the audience,
consider how this ability can serve us as
one of the players. This capacity
provides an important facility for
anticipating our opponent’s moves
allowing us to plan a response even
before the opponent has completed a
groundstroke. This kind of anticipation
does not depend on explicit reasoning or
conscious reflection—it seems to operate
as an automatic mechanism 3, 4 . This
kind of mechanism may facilitate
Page | 60
understanding the behavior of others. If
your brain mirrors the neural activity in
the brain of someone you see acting, this
could provide a basis for understanding
the motivation for the action. If your
brain resonates to the observed action as
if you were acting, this could call to
mind previous experiences acting that
way providing a memory for why you
acted that way. That is, our social brain
may directly resonate to the actions of
others without reasoning explicitly about
those actions. This kind of mechanism,
through which intentions might be
inferred, could then prepare responses
quickly to facilitate the smooth flow of
social interactions whether in a game or
a dialogue. Of course, a critical aspect
of such a mechanism is to differentiate
our resonance to other people’s actions
and the control of our own. This kind
of neural system for mapping the actions
and intentions of others has been
identified with a network of regions
called the mirror neuron system 5 , and
this system may help to induce a degree
of reflexive similarity or identification
between self and other. The mirror
neuron system appears to be
continuously engaged unless it is
actively suppressed by inhibition, so that
this system may continuous monitor the
behavior of ‘others’ in our social
environment.
Of course, mapping the
movements of the opponent is useful,
but certainly not sufficient to defend our
position, score a point, or win a match.
One needs to execute countermoves.
This is the domain of the motor system
in the brain, which includes regions
involved in the preparation and
execution of motor action. The motor
system is responsible for the
implementation of one’s goals and
intentions to perform an action 6 . Thus,
the social brain includes monitoring and
motor systems that function in parallel.
The mirror system puts the player in the
opponent’s shoes and monitors the
opponent’s actions in an anticipatory
manner. Other parts of the social brain
maintain the distinction between player
and opponent by shaping the
implementation of one’s actions, namely
by engaging a counteraction.
In sum, a tennis game or any
social interaction depends on a complex
network of brain regions that mediate
perception and action, and the
relationship between observed action
and one’s own behavior. The overlap in
brain regions responsible for these two
important social functions suggests how
tightly coupled and coordinated social
interactions can be. However, these two
systems cannot operate in isolation from
our knowledge of the context in which
behavior occurs. We, therefore, turn to
this topic next.
The Social Context
In a tennis game or any social
interaction (e.g., dancing, conversation),
the behavior of one individual
constitutes a stimulus for others. If a
behavior is meaningful, then neural
mechanisms responsible for social
perception and social interaction are
likely to be activated to engage in
complementary action. In a competitive
context, such as the tennis game, the
motor system is engaged in the
preparation and execution of
complementary actions to those
observed and anticipated based on the
inferred goals and intentions of the
competitor. However, if everyone shares
the same goal, for example, as in an
audience clapping, the neural systems
for monitoring the actions of others and
executing one’s own actions can be
Page | 61
mutually reinforcing leading to
synchrony.
In any dynamic social situation
observing one person’s action can
initiate neural activity in another. Parts
of the observer’s motor system become
activated, making it possible to respond
in synchrony. In fact, the specific actions
that are observed are not as important as
the perceived goals or intentions of the
observed person. One consequence of
this is that a person is sensitive to new
actions in the social environment. A
second is that significant actions by
another person can quickly produce
complementary motor responses. Thus,
adaptive social behavior is a product of
perceptual monitoring and motor
processes. The complexity of the social
environment necessitates selective
responding to socially significant
features of any social interaction. Such
selective responding depends on the
observer having particular goals for
action. The identification of significant
stimuli (e.g., a threatening backhand
smash) activates in the competitor’s
brain goal-driven decision processes that
operate in parallel with continuous social
monitoring and lead to a counteraction
(e.g., a defensive lob) produced by the
motor system. However, a linesman
collecting a ball during a tennis match
does not constitute a significant action
for the competition and, even if
observed, does not initiate any
counteraction.
Let us now return to the
perspective of a spectator at the tennis
match. While the specific movements
driving the tennis match have significant
implications for the players’ actions,
these movements have a different
implication for the spectator from whom
no overt responses are warranted. If an
observed action produced by someone
else does not have personal significance
for an observer, the motor system does
not respond in the same way at all 7 . The
goal-dependent aspect of observing the
actions of others allows us to understand
and respond quickly and effectively
without confusing what we do with what
we see. However, in some special cases,
when a group of individuals all respond
together, the same motor system may
operate differently. It is in these
situations when we are neither observer
nor respondent but part of a flock or
chorus that our sense of individuated self
may begin to dissolve into the larger
social group.
The Social Parameters for Suspended
Self-Consciousness
The dissolution of self-other
boundaries is likely to be manifest under
a specific set of conditions, which
includes a strong feeling of identification
with (i.e., connection between) oneself
and a group of others, the absence of
constraints to action by oneself or the
observed others, a common goal shared
by the group, and the absence of a
recognized external synchronizing signal
to which one can attribute any
synchronized behavior. Clapping in
unison following a rousing performance
is a more common example. This
remarkable phenomenon is evidenced
despite considerable individual
differences in clapping tempos. The
transition to entrained clapping, whereby
each clapper affects the surrounding
other clappers both locally and globally,
enhances the noise intensity at the
moment of the clapping even though it
leads to a decrease in the overall average
noise intensity in the room.
Synchronized behavior occurs
rhythmically and one way of capturing
its regularities is to model its cycles,
periods, frequencies, and amplitudes 1,2 .
Page | 62
Depending on the particular behavior
and interaction in question, behavioral
cycles of interpersonal entrainment can
range from milliseconds to hours.
Indeed, this kind of interpersonal
entrainment is a pervasive phenomenon
not specific to human social behavior
alone 8 .
When does synchronized
clapping occur? The distinctive feature
of such an event is a convergence
between the neural mechanisms
underlying the monitoring of the
movement of others and the execution of
one’s own movements. The specific
factors responsible for the tipping point
from asynchronous to synchronous
clapping are not yet known, but
descriptively each individual shifts the
timing of his or her subsequent clap to
the perceived timing of claps by the
whole collective. Thus, a continuous
adjustment process emerges in the form
of a collective behavior (synchronized
clapping) to which each individual
contributes and no single individual
controls. Such continuous monitoring of
the collective rather than individuals
within the collective and the adjustment
of one’s own movements to synchronize
one’s behavior with that of the collective
result in a continuous loop of performing
the very same action leading to
dissolution between self and other and
the emergence of an entrained unit. The
resulting effect is the materialization of a
supra-individual behavioral
phenomenon, namely extended
behavioral cycles that are locked
together in time. Although the
emergence of clapping in unison can be
regarded as a phenomenon worthy of
more detailed understanding, it does not
induce in its performers the necessity of
searching for an explanation since the
readily available account is that the
performance somehow produces
synchronous clapping.
There is preliminary evidence
that even with no externally imposed
demands prolonged synchronization
emerges within pairs of people
interacting or dyads 9 . What one finds is
that despite individual differences in
movements, participants entrain (tap
together in time) rapidly when
participants can perceive the behavior of
others 9 . Extensive research in
coordination dynamics has demonstrated
that such entrainment does not depend
on the intention to coordinate behavior
10, 11 . Studies have repeatedly shown that
there is a spontaneous propensity to
mimic other people (generally observed
in dyads). One implication this kind of
behavioral synchrony is the emergence
of affective bonding – such as a feeling
of rapport – both in the case of mimicry 12
and between the synchronized partners 13 .
One might conjecture that positive
feelings are even stronger when more
people are synchronized.
The conditions that lead to
behavioral synchrony can vary. It is
interesting that people may be more
likely to experience the dissolution of
self-other boundaries when
synchronization is produced without any
obvious external director and is
continuous. Prolonged spontaneous and
unintended entrainment among three or
more people may introduce this feeling,
because the emergence of synchrony
cannot be attributed to a single external
cause.
Conclusions
Social interaction involving
extended periods of synchronized
behavior are not part of our daily
experience, particularly when they
involve more than two people. How do
Page | 63
we understand this kind of synchrony
when it occurs? In the Western
intellectual tradition, we have a strong
tendency to search and explain events in
terms of individual agency and
causation.
Social events are generally
understood in terms of contributions of
the individual and the situation itself.
The degree to which the person or the
situational constraints shape the nature
of the event will vary greatly. However,
spontaneous and prolonged entrainment
among three or more people introduces
an experience that is difficult to explain
by these more traditional accounts.
These experiences cannot be easily
reduced the actions of a single person, so
an account has to be found in some
source that goes beyond the individual.
The powerful sense of unity and
belonging that emerges from this kind of
experience almost demands a different
kind of explanation than we generally
consider. Indeed, such feelings
emerging from the synchrony of
behavior may provide some of the
foundation for the cultural interpretation
of a transcendental experience.
References
1 Ne´da, Z., Ravasz, E., Brechet, Y.,
Vicsek, T., & Barabasi, A. L. (2000a).
The sound of many hands
clapping*Tumultuous applause can
transform itself into waves of
synchronized clapping. Nature, 403,
849_850.
2 Ne´da, Z., Ravasz, E., Vicsek, T.,
Brechet, Y., & Barabasi, A. L. (2000b).
Physics of the rhythmic applause.
Physical Review E, 61, 6987_6992.
3 Semin, G. R. & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008).
Grounding Social Cognition:
Synchronization, Entrainment, and
Coordination. In G.R. Semin & E.R.
Smith (Eds.), Embodied grounding:
Social, cognitive, affective, and
neuroscientific approaches (pp. 119-
148). New York: Cambridge University
Press
4 Semin, G. R. & Cacioppo, J. T. (2009).
From Embodied Representation to Co-
Regulation. In J. A. Pineda (Ed.).
“Mirror Neuron Systems: The Role of
Mirroring Processes in Social
Cognition.” (pp. 107-120). Humana
Press.
5 Iacoboni, M., Woods, R. P., Brass, M.,
Bekkering, H., Mazziotta, J. C., &
Rizzolatti, G. (1999) Science, 286:2526–
2528
6 Elsinger C. L., Harrington D. L., &
Rao S. M. (2006). From preparation to
online control: Reappraisal of neural
circuitry mediating internally generated
and externally guided actions.
NeuroImage 31:1177–1187.
7 Baldissera, F., Cavallari, P., Craighero,
L., & Fadiga, L (2001). Modulation of
spinal excitability during observation of
hand actions in humans, European
Journal of Neuroscience, 13, 190 -194.
8 Strogatz, S. (2003). Rhythms of nature,
rhythms of ourselves. London: Allan
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9 Tognoli, E., Lagarde, J., DeGuzman, C.
D., Kelso, J. A. S. (2007). The phi
complex as a neuromarker of human
social coordination. PNAS, 19, 8190-
8195.
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11 Jirsa, V. K., & Kelso, J. A. S. (2004)
Coordination Dynamics: Issues and
Trends. Springer, New York.
12 Dijksterhuis, A, & Bargh J. A. (2001).
Advances In Experimental Social
Psychology, 33, 1-40.
13 Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., &
Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional
contagion. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Page | 65
You and I as One
Any social group can be thought
of as either a collection of individuals or
as a single new entity with emergent,
unified group behavior. When a mob
forms to surge together down a street
one way and then another; when a flock
of birds wheels about together, closely
clustered as they fly without colliding;
and when an orchestra performs with
highly coordinated timing, we
momentarily forget about the individuals
and see the collective behavior as a new,
single social entity. Indeed, as Cacioppo
discusses, many species seem to gather,
flock, and coordinate to form such
collectives. For humans there are many
situations from flash mobs and sports
teams to choirs and audiences, when
people congregate in this way.
The drive for people to affiliate
and group is not sufficient on its own to
produce the coordinated behavior that
emerges from such a collective.
Sometimes an organizing signal, like the
conductor of an orchestra, can
synchronize the behavior. Other times
common goals and behavioral
constraints can synchronize a group, as
in a flock of birds. In his chapter, Gün
Semin discusses how such synchrony
may be self-organizing – that is, it is
achieved without intention, effort, or
awareness by our social brains, even
when there is no clear signal or
constraint. In cases of such human
sociality, the group may act as though it
has a single mind. Indeed, Semin
approaches this issue to relate the
collective behavior as an embodied
consequence of individual social forces
that jointly operate to satisfy our need to
affiliate, and to consider how connecting
behavior through synchrony may create
a collective mind.
Howard Nusbaum specifically
discusses a different invisible social
force that has evolved with the power to
bind people into a collective—language.
Language is the richest social signal that
has the power to move people to act and
to move groups to act together. In order
for language to act as a force, it must
somehow affect people with sufficient
social and emotional impact. As
Nusbaum discusses the impact of
language, it operates at a social and
emotional level similar to that discussed
by Semin rather than exclusively
through the inferences drawn from
meaning.
Page | 66
Chapter 7 7
Action at a Distance: The Invisible
Force of Language
7 The lead author is Howard Nusbaum, Ph.D.,
Professor of Psychology and Computational
Neuroscience, and co-director of the Center for
Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the
University of Chicago. He has served as the
Chair of the Psychology Department since 1997.
He has served as the editor for the International
Journal of Speech Technology and is on the
editorial board of Brain & Language, and has
edited several books on spoken language
processing. His research interests include
spoken language use, mechanisms of learning
and attention, and the role of sleep in learning.
His recent research has investigated the social
use of language and the evolution of language.
In addition, he has been working on neural
mechanisms of reward and economic decisions.
We often think about language in terms
of the information in newspapers or speeches or
reports. However, language is basis of all our
social relationships and institutions. We reward
and praise with language and we shun and
punish with language, perhaps more often than
with any other medium. In the recent election,
Democratic candidates actually gave speeches
outlining different views of the importance of
language in our society. One candidate held that
words are simply words and only have the force
that we give to them by reasoning about them.
The other candidate argued that speech has the
power to move people to connect and act.
Nusbaum was struck by this debate because it
seems to him that the power of language goes
well beyond what linguists and psychologists
talk about as “meaning” and that understanding
the meaning of language may depend on
understanding the social and emotional impact of
language. In this chapter, the idea of the impact
of language at a distance is explored.
Language is one of the most
important ways in which the social brain
makes connections, enhances
connections, and severs connections
among people. Language is our primary
medium of social exchange, grounding
and elaborating our selves and our
relationships in every conversation.
However, language goes well beyond
personal connections to connect us
culturally through stories, songs, and
shared manners of speech. Language
also provides the formal framework that
defines many of our social institutions.
Language gives form and substance to
the governance and behavior of every
social institution from education to law
to religion. Clearly there are many ways
in which language serves to knit us
together both formally and informally.
For a linguist, all of these uses can be
analyzed in terms of the structure of
sentences and their content. However,
structure and content do not, on their
own merits, provide a complete picture
of how language can have the impact it
does on our sense of social connection.
How does language move us to act,
change our feelings, and connect us to
others? It seems unlikely that the impact
of language is simply the result of
dispassionate rational inferences and
conclusions drawn from a logical
analysis of sentences.
In 1976, Barbara Jordan, a
Congresswoman from Texas, gave the
commencement address at Brandeis
University. Listening to her speak about
the importance of public service and the
importance of using talent and ability in
service of one’s country was an
impressive experience. Her delivery was
clear and not particularly dramatic and
yet the force of her speech was riveting.
It was sufficient to turn a graduating
senior’s mind from graduate school in
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psychology to (at least momentary)
consideration of a career in government
service. A student with the long-held
intent of becoming a researcher and with
no interest in politics, government, or
public service might seem to be an
immovable object. And yet, in that
moment, Jordan’s speech had sufficient
impact to make government service
seem like the only path one would want
to take or should ever consider.
Although her points were argued
well, the impact of Jordan’s speech was
not simply rhetorical. John F.
Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country
can do for you….” and Martin Luther
King, Jr.’s “I have a dream….” affected
listeners deeply well beyond the
cognitive strengths of a good argument.
Moreover, while all these speeches were
delivered beautifully and from the heart,
it is not the performance of these
speeches alone that can move listeners to
act on behalf of others. The
performance alone cannot give substance
to an empty message. While there are
cases in which a great performance may
suggest briefly that there was content of
import even in the absence of a real
message, it is more likely the
conjunction of message and delivery that
moves people. In these speeches is a
clear demonstration of the power of
language. Language is more than words
and more than delivery. Indeed, Cicero,
in De Oratore, said that rhetoric conveys
information, persuades listeners, and
evokes emotion.
“In the beginning was the word….”
If “the word made flesh” is taken
metaphorically, the power of language
can be made visceral in sermons.
Consider the power of Jonathan
Edwards’ sermon, which Clark Gilpin’s
chapter discusses, to terrify a
congregation, to wrench them from
complacency with images of torment. A
sermon delivers a message, but it can do
so in calm tones of instruction or with
fire and brimstone. The choice and
poetry of words and the cadence and
intonation of speaking can draw the
listener in slowly or seize the listener
suddenly, the very sounds of speech
painting images in the mind while
igniting new inferences with literal and
metaphoric descriptions.
In the realm of the spiritual, there
are few corporeal manifestations that can
be perceived directly. Neither heaven
nor hell, neither God nor the Devil can
be seen or heard or touched. Preaching
is needed to spell out the work of unseen
hands and will and illuminate the power
of the unseen. The force of that which is
not seen can only be felt when
transmitted directly through speech.
In Phaedrus, Plato described
rhetoric as the art of leading the soul.
Thus it is not surprising that, while at the
core of religion is a collection of beliefs
and concepts and canons, the fabric and
form of religion is language. Symbols
and icons are certainly important, but
language is the medium through which
the force of theology is actualized in
prayers, benedictions, sermons, and
teaching. Language can reach across
time and space to change minds,
feelings, and behavior, encoding laws
and beliefs and presenting them with a
concrete reality in the here and now.
This is one kind of impact from author to
audience in which a kind of connection
is constructed bridging minds.
At the same time, in religious
practices, another kind of connection is
formed within a congregation. Joint
recitation, responsive reading, collective
listening, and understanding may serve
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to connect people in a religious service.
Although joint participation in any event
(such as sports or theatre) may have
some of the same effect as discussed by
Gün Semin, the content of language and
the intent of the messages in religious
practice is often focused on developing
and strengthening social and spiritual
connections.
Everyone knows someone who
moved to another country, or to another
part of their own country where speech
patterns differ. After a period of time, in
the context of novel speech patterns,
some people adopt the speech patterns
around them. This kind of linguistic
convergence is well documented and is
moderated by social factors such as the
desire to be accepted or the attempt to be
persuasive. 1 When people talk together,
one person’s speech can impact the way
another person talks in order to promote
social connection. Indeed, the same kind
of behavioral convergence is found over
the course of conversations for other
kinds of non-linguistic actions as well. 2
Information, impact, and
understanding
How does language bind us
together and compel us to action,
thought, and feeling? When we talk,
sound vibration is transmitted from
mouth to ears. Facial expressions and
manual gestures punctuate, illustrate,
and illuminate our speech. These
acoustic and visual signals travel over
space and time to the eyes and ears of
the audience. The impact of such
communication is true action at a
distance.
This notion of language as action
at a distance is relatively well accepted
in the scientific study of language. But
in research on language and
communication by psycholinguists and
linguists, the emphasis is on the
information contained within an
utterance and the structure and form by
which this information is presented.
Research questions often focus on the
variety of ways the same message can be
framed and how listeners interpret such
messages. But little of this work
addresses the impact of the message
itself.
The standard view of language
processing is that we hear the sounds of
speech (acoustic patterns) that we
translate mentally into words. The
meanings of these words are determined
and then the meanings combined
(through our knowledge of sentence
structure) to result in sentence meaning.
Given that a sentence typically occurs in
a context of other sentences (e.g., a
sermon) or in response to other speech
(e.g., a conversation), this context is then
used to frame and reinterpret the
sentence meaning.
Metaphor, irony, sarcasm, and
other figures are generally thought of as
being understood later in this process
although in Gilpin’s chapter the