Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

And alongside desire, our research finds, they will feel a deep sense of anxiety: When we studied young couples’ playful, loving exchanges with each other, we found that they reported high levels of desire (no surprise there), but those feelings of passion closely corresponded to feelings of anxiety. G. C. Gonzaga et al., “Love and the Commitment Problem in Romantic Relations and Friendship,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001): 247–62.

the male caricatured all too readily in scientific research: David Buss has done numerous studies that reveal that young men are all too ready to have casual sex. Buss, The Evolution of Desire. See also Bruce Ellis, “The Evolution of Sexual Attraction: Evaluative Mechanisms in Women,” in The Adapted Mind.

75 percent of college males: R. D. Clark and E. Hatfield, “Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers,” Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality 2 (1989): 39–55.

they’ll often go down in flames of hatred and litigation: David G. Myers, The American Paradox (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), chap. 3.

estimates of adultery: “Adultery Survey Finds ‘I do’ Means ‘I do,’” New York Times, October 19, 1993. Although this reference is a bit old, it cites some of the best survey data on the question of rates of adultery.

recent studies of abstinence programs provided to middle-and high-school students: www.siecus.org/media/press/press0141.html.

In the depths of romantic love, we idealize our partners: Murray and Holmes, “Seeing Virtues in Faults: Negativity and the Transformation of Interpersonal Narratives in Close Relationships,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65 (1993): 707–23; “A Leap of Faith? Positive Illusions in Romantic Relationships,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23 (1997): 586–604; “The (Mental) Ties That Bind: Cognitive Structures That Predict Relationship Resilience,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (1999): 1228–44. Murray et al., “What the Motivated Mind Sees: Comparing Friends’ Perspectives to Married Partners’ Views of Each Other,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 36 (2000): 600–620; Murray, Holmes, and D. W. Griffin, “The Benefits of Positive Illusions: Idealization and the Construction of Satisfaction in Close Relationships,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70 (1996): 79–98.

More dramatically, romantic love deactivates threat detection: H. E. Fisher, A. Aron, and L. L. Brown, “Romantic Love: A Mammalian Brain System for Mate Choice,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, 361, no. 1476 (2006): 2173–86.

We can pin our hopes on oxytocin: For summaries of what is known about oxytocin, see K. U. Morberg, The Oxytocin Factor (Cambridge, MA: De Capo, 2003); S. E. Taylor et al., “Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight,” Psychological Review 107 (2000): 411–29; Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

This remarkable discovery emerged: C. S. Carter, “Neuroendocrine Perspectives on Social Attachment and Love,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 23, no. 8 (1998): 779–818; J. R. Williams et al., “Oxytocin Administered Centrally Facilitates Formation of a Partner Preference in Female Prairie Voles (Microtus Ochrogaster),” Journal of Neuroendocrinology 6 (1998): 247–50.

oxytocin increases after sexual behavior: M. S. H. Carmichael et al., “Plasma Oxytocin Increases in the Human Sexual Response,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 64, no. 1 (1987): 27–31.

injections of oxytocin increase social contact and pro-social behavior: D. M. Witt, C. Carter, and C. Walton, “Central and Peripheral Effects of Oxytocin Administration,” Physiology and Behavior 37 (1990): 63–9; Witt, J. T. Winslow, and Thomas Insel, “Enhanced Social Interaction in Rats Following Chronic, Centrally Infused Oxytocin,” Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior 43 (1992): 855–61.