Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

Just as critically, evolutionary changes in the morphology of the human hand likewise facilitated the development of the tactile language of emotion. As humans began to walk upright, the hand changed dramatically. We acquired the opposable thumb—the morphological darling of many evolutionists. We also developed more dexterous fingers. Chimp thumbs are much shorter, in relation to the rest of their hand, than the human thumb. Humans, unlike chimps or bonobos, became able to make precision grips between thumb and forefinger, and power grips using the entire hand. These shifts in the morphology of the hand, most obviously, allowed our hominid predecessors to emerge as the first complex toolmakers in primate evolution, fashioning sophisticated arrowheads, clothes, baskets, and so forth. In the process, we developed profoundly expressive hands. Our hands allowed us to point with precision, a critical part of the child’s emergent understanding of the referential quality of language: Words refer to things. With the refined acrobatics of our hands and fingers, we learned to signal different objects and states with what are known as emblems—gestures that translate to words. With our hands we learned to convey internal states with specific patterns of touch.

The skin and hand evolved to enable adaptive response to heat and for tool use. Alongside these pragmatic gains, our hominid predecessors evolved a communicative system that became central to how humans form and maintain bonds. Most obviously, the skin is the platform for intimacy and sexual relations. It is a medium in which individuals in conflict channel aggression, through pinches, pokes, prods, and punches. We soothe and reassure with hands on skin. The skin and touch are a central medium in which the goodness of one individual can spread to another, resulting in high jen ratios as the primary orientation in groups.

CONTACT HIGH

 

Faith healers have been in human society since at least the time of the classical Greeks and Romans. Central to their repertoire of healing skills is touch. Recent neuroscience suggests that, at least in the use of touch, faith healers may have been on to something. Scientists have learned that touch is a basic reward, as potent as the sweetest of summer peaches or the scent of blooming jasmine. The progenitor of this view is Edmund Rolls, of Cambridge University, who has studied the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which, as we will recall, was damaged in Eadward Muybridge during his fateful stagecoach accident in east Texas. Rolls’s thesis is that this region of the brain processes information about basic rewards, which help individuals navigate their physical and social environments, acting in ways, presumably, that bring about more rewarding social encounters, more nutrition-rich searches for foods, and so on. He has found that sweet tastes and pleasing smells stimulate activity in the OFC, in particular in hungry animals. But there is more. He has also documented that the simple touch of the arm with a soft velvety cloth activates the OFC, so important to our understanding of how to obtain rewards. This is a remarkable finding: Touch (the right kind, of course) is as powerful and immediate a reward as chocolate or the scent of Mother to an infant. Touch is a primary color in the color scheme of pleasure, wired deep into our nervous systems.

Further scientific studies found that touch—again, the right kind—sets in motion a cascade of rewarding biochemical reactions. For example, in one study participants received a fifteen-minute Swedish massage, the type that is stock in trade at spas and now a much-appreciated service at more forward-looking airports. While participants’ Merkel cells were being pleasingly pressed, their blood was drawn. A quick neck rub to the shoulders by a stranger triggered the release of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that promotes oceanic feelings of devotion and trust. Other studies have found that massage (like Prozac) increases levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, and that it reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Touch also appears to release endorphins in the recipient—a natural source of pleasure and pain relief.

Touch, then, triggers activation of the orbitofrontal cortex and the release of oxytocin and endorphins—biological platforms of social connection. Just as importantly, recent studies of maternal behavior in rats suggest that the act of touching is physiologically rewarding for the toucher. Rat mothers devote a great deal of time to licking their rat pups and coming into nose-to-nose physical contact with their offspring. Recent studies have found that rat mothers who lick their pups a lot, who touch their offspring a great deal, get surges of dopamine upon physical contact. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in the pursuit of rewards; it underlies our experience of sensory pleasure. When we touch, the implication is, we get a burst of pleasure as well.