Chapter 2: What Were They Thinking?
Digression: Government from the Paleolithic to Philadelphia
Page 56: Internal Social Regulation: Worth
Sis taking a confident pose on some books, but Average Joe jumps in front interrupting.
SIS
PEER PRES-
JOE
Oh, I get it…
HORMONES!
SIS (taken aback)
What? No!
Remember how I brought up gossip a few pages back? That’s how we kept tabs on each other, and that’s how we made sure our peers lived up to our standards!
JOE (thinking it through)
Yeeesss… but how would that have worked?
I imagine we’d be living up to these standards automatically.
For self-regulation to be as natural as you’re saying, we’d have to know how to behave… without stopping to think through every little thing…
…which means our default social regulation can’t be a conscious process, but an unconscious, biological process! A natural one, like any other animal.
(I mean, really, isn’t that where you were going with all this?)
SIS (weighing words gesture)
Kinda…
Well, yes and no…
I mean, at the heart of, uh…
It all works because deep down, we all fundamentally crave
WORTH
…and that is the secret to our success!
SIS (narrating)
When talking about the “why” and “how” of government, we often think of people as self-serving economic units
— each of us acting as individuals, trying to maximize our own self-interest. That sounds good, but it’s wrong. It’s a false assumption, and it’ll give you screwy results.
It’s equally incorrect to say our “default” social order is to help our “blood” — folks who share our same lineage. Again, these ideas of family, tribe, and clan are fairly recent. They’re potent narratives, sure, but they’re not our nature.
I’d argue that our real default — what truly drives human social regulation — is our inherent desire for worth. For the sense that we matter… to the people who matter to us!
Smiling girl clutching a flower
GIRL
You like me! You really like me!
Text box with Sis and Joe cameos.
SIS
Important: Worth is not inherent. You’re not born with it, it’s not automatic just because you exist. It’s really not even a trait you have. Worth is a perception that other people have… about you.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to live today in a culture that says everyone has a basic human value. That narrative is central to so much of constitutional law! But it’s only our present narrative, not a universal truth. And this value still only describes how we feel about you… not how you are.
JOE
And you thought I was wordy!
Fishing people on the beach, one guy repairing a net, one offering to help him, and another guy lazing about.
YOUNG WOMAN (indicating the guy offering to help)
See this guy? He’s a good person. Tries to do the right thing, pulls his weight, cares how you’re doing…
See if you can guess how we all feel about him!
HELPER GUY
Need a hand?
YOUNG WOMAN
Not like that no-good worthless asshole over there — only cares about himself… always there are meal times, but never around when there’s work to do…
Mm-hmm. Guess who ain’t getting a seat at supper any more?
People walking away from an anguished woman.
SIS (narrating)
And worth does drive unconscious, biological self-regulation.
Each of us is a social, communal being who needs the acceptance of others as much as we need food — maybe even more.
A sense of belonging, of being valued, respected… Such things may not be technically necessary for our organs to function, but they are a biological requirement if our minds and bodies are to function properly.
Hardly surprising, it being a matter of life and death and all that.
Handy and Dandy Co Worth-O-Meter.
SIS (narrating)
Because it’s so important, we evolved to be super-aware of how others value our worth. Your brain is constantly monitoring your social status… in real time.
Non-conscious background apps, always on, watch for signals from other people, watch your own behavior, respond with emotions and social signals, and even control how you behave!
Your self-awareness app, for example, watches your own behavior and listens to your own thoughts. How else can you tell whether you’re behaving appropriately?
In a neat trick of unconscious imagination, you can now pre-emptively feel about yourself the way others would feel about you (and modify your behavior accordingly).
Sis and Hobbes
SIS
Hobbes’ “solitary brutish” mankind wouldn’t need a sense of “self,” because it wouldn’t matter whether other people approved of you.
Brain at a lectern.
SIS (narrating)
Why you did something matters, so your storytelling superpower kicks in to explain your own behavior to you — in the context of what’s socially acceptable.
It helps you both make sense of how appropriately you’re acting, and justify yourself to others.
BRAIN
It’s like having your own personal press secretary!
Stick figures
SIS (narrating)
This “meta-cognition” ability is crucial for proper socialization and self-regulation — for building good character.
People who aren’t good at it may not even realize (much less accept) that they’ve done something wrong.
They’re also less willing to compromise, consider alternatives, and build consensus.
JERKS
Hey, don’t blame me!
Ha ha, suckers!
My way or the highway!
My way is the only way!
Couple standing in a stream, catching fish.
SIS (narrating)
Fortunately, most of us get pretty good at it after early childhood. Self-awareness is a standard component of social maturity.
In bands, exceptions must have been rare.
GIRL
Maybe your era can tolerate people who don’t have much self-awareness.
GUY
But in ours…?
Feedback contraption, churning inputs (praise, facial expressions, gestures, body language, laughter, “No!”, blushing, tone of voice, tears, smiles, social emotions) into a green beam of positive rewards (promote pro-social behavior) and a red beam of negative restraints (repress selfish urges).
SIS (narrating)
But there’s a lot more going on, far away from your consciousness. Pre-conscious processes and neurotransmitters form a complex feedback app that picks up on social signals and cues, on compliments and criticisms, and on your own self-assessments — and then it adjusts your behavior accordingly.
When it’s working properly, you learn to do the right thing automatically — you do what’s right because it’s what you do, not ‘cause you thought it through.
GREEN BEAM
Positive rewards include actual physical pleasures like euphoria, comfort, thrills… and emotions like happiness, pride, and joy. Doing good literally makes you feel good, and want to keep doing it.
RED BEAM
Negative restraints include physical discomfort and even pain (ever suffer heartbreak? mental anguish? that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach?)… and unpleasant emotions like shame, dismay, and sadness. Social disapproval makes us feel miserable, and we really do not want to feel that way again.
Stick figures
SIS (narrating)
Negative feedback affects us more. The downsides of losing worth, of rejection and exclusion, could be deadly terrible.
ANGUISHED
I’m starving!
vs.
OFFERING FOOD
More?
BIG BELLY
No thanks, I’m stuffed!
SIS (narrating)
Positive rewards are great, but once you’re accepted it’s not like you need more acceptance.
You didn’t need to be extra-awesome, but you couldn’t afford to be even a little awful.
That said, the good feedback is really good!
Oxytocin hugging and smiling.
SIS (narrating)
Your autonomic nervous system uses a cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones to regulate your social as unconsciously as your heartbeat. One of the major players is oxytocin.
[SUGGESTED EDIT: Change “regulate your social” to “regulate your social behavior”]
Worried half of Oxy T being comforted by the other half
SIS (narrating)
This one’s all about our feelings for other people. Oxytocin is behind the bonds we form — bonds of love, affection, loyalty, friendship. It’s what stimulates altruism and self-sacrifice. And it helps steer us towards pro-social behavior.
Pro-social behavior (by you, and by others) causes Oxy T. to calm stress and fear hormones…
OXY T.
Shh, it’s okay. We’re here for you.
Both halves smiling happily with each other
SIS (narrating)
…While stimulating your brain’s reward system, making you feel safe and comfortable and happy.
People engaged in social behaviors
SIS (narrating)
Whenever you engage in social activity, oxytocin and its effects condition you to feel trust and affection for those you’re sharing the experience with.
Women holding hands and jumping with excitement.
SIS (narrating)
Social contact counts, too! Holding hands, hugging, cuddling… all these physical connections are rewarded.
Undressed couple sharing a loving moment.
SIS (narrating)
Sex can flood you with the stuff…
…especially if you already have an emotional bond.
“Three is a magic number” family again.
SIS (narrating)
Skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her baby stimulates massive waves of oxytocin, reinforcing ever more powerful feelings of love, and instincts of motherly care.
(It works on fathers a little, too, though dads seem to form stronger bonds by playing with their kids and helping them explore their world.)
Teen boys from before.
SIS (narrating)
Importantly, oxytocin helps your brain identify (and recognize) which people matter to you.
BOYS
Team!
I love these guys!
Team!
SIS (narrating)
And it reinforces your empathy for those people. You feel their pain. You’re more likely to aid your teammates and sacrifice on their behalf.
Good survival skill!
Text box
SIS (narrating)
On the flip side: Oxytocin increases your distrust of strangers!
That seems odd for a system designed for bonding, right? But in fact it reinforces antipathy and aversion to “the other.”
Joe confused, Sis shrugging
JOE
But isn’t xenophobia the opposite of pro-social behavior?
SIS
Yeah, but if you think about it, even if strangers weren’t a threat, they still wouldn’t have been invested in helping you.
Putting yourself at risk for someone who won’t reciprocate? That would have been pointless.
…So evolution seems to have favored a system that inhibits us from doing that.
Text box
SIS (narrating)
This tension between “us” and “them” will go on to be the eternal struggle of government.
Who counts as “one of us”?
And what if those with power don’t think we’re “one of us”?
These are questions that will drive political conflict and development from the Paleolithic to Philadelphia…
…to the present!
Blissed-out dopamine and scattered drugs.
SIS (narrating)
Oxytocin rewards pro-social behavior with dopamine.
Dr. D. is the one who makes it all feel good.
His job is to motivate your brain to do that social stuff again!
To give you an idea of how good he is at his job, modern drugs like cocaine and meth work by imitating the positive social feedback we get from dopamine.
Just about every addictive drug plays with our dopamine pathway in one way or another.
Sunny serotonin
SIS (narrating)
Seratonin is another important one, involved in social cues and signals, and working behind the scenes to make sure you’re getting along with everyone.
SARA T.
Hi! Call me Sara!
You look great, by the way!
I’m not like the other guys
— I don’t reward you for what you’ve done…
My job is to get you in a better mood going forward!
I’m here to perk you up, make you a more open and cheerful you… a more sociable and likeable you!
…A more worthwhile worthy you!
Sara T. turning up dial, strengthening bond between tinkertoy neurons like Hippy the hippocampus did.
SIS (narrating)
Like her cousin Oxy, Sara doesn’t work like an on-off switch, making big changes all at once.
They gradually build their effects over time. Little adjustments to your brain’s wiring that strengthen this association, weaken that one.
SARA T.
I’m gonna turn that one up a smidge!
SIS (narrating)
But if they keep turning that dial, day after day, the cumulative effects can be potent! Robust feelings of attachment, loyalty, empathy, sociability, etc. that can withstand whatever the world throws at them.
Happy singing seratonins
SIS (narrating)
Seratonin basically makes you feel awesome when you and yours are getting along and playing nice.
SINGING SERATONINS
Everything is awesome!
Everything is cool when you’re part of a team!
Worth-o-Meter spewing forth lots of seratonins
SIS (narrating)
Your Worth-O-Meter has a big effect on your serotonin levels. The more you feel like others approve of you, the more the world just seems right — and the more serotonin gets pumped into your brain…
SEROTONINS
Feelin’ groovy!
SIS (narrating)
…and the more you feel pro-social, cooperative, confident, friendly, relaxed…
…so others like you even more…
…making you produce even more serotonin and want to keep winning approval!
Worried Sara
Sara T.
Oh no, people who matter to you are criticizing you. Rejecting you.
SIS (narrating)
But if things aren’t going her way?
Furious Sara on fire
Sara T.
You want feedback?
I’ll give you feedback!
How’s that feel, motherfucker? Like someone kicked you in the gut? That’s right, I just activated your pain regions!
You gonna be antisocial again, motherfucker? Nah, I didn’t think so!
Sis and Joe talking heads
SIS
That’s only a few of the hormones that regulate our communal behavior kinda instinctively.
There’s neuropeptide Y, and acetylcholine…
JOE
Ha! I told you it was hormones!
SIS
Testosterone is your “let’s do it!” hormone.
In more ways than one.
Believe it or not, higher testosterone increases your friendliness, cooperation, and altruism.
JOE
I thought it made you more aggressive.
SIS
Not all aggression is anti-social.
It spikes dramatically during challenges that are important to self-worth, driving up your dopamine to motivate you to do well, take risks, and go all out for the team!
Text starts getting smaller and smaller
I guess the “I give up hormone is cortisol?
[SUGGESTED EDIT: Close the quotes after “I give up]
This one’s produced when you think you might lose status.
When you psyche yourself out before a challenge, cortisol is your confidence killer — it makes you do even worse.
[SUGGESTED EDIT: Change “psyche” to “psych”]
You pay too much attention to what other people are thinking, you get self-conscious, shy, stressed… the opposite of “cool”…
BIG text
ANYWAY…
Nurse hauling several people on gurneys into an operating room where surgery is already going on.
SIS (narrating)
There’s more to internal self-regulation than mere chemistry. You can think, after all!
When faced with a choice, you can stop…
NURSE
Doctor! There’s been a terrible accident. These five men need transplants right now or they will die!
Luckily, the patient you’re operating on is a perfect match — we could chop him up for parts!
SURGEON
Just a moment, nurse.
SIS (narrating)
Think it through…
SURGEON (thinking)
Hmm… If I do nothing, five people will die.
If I act, then only one person will die, and five will be saved…
And we could always blame the anaesthesiologist…
SIS (narrating)
…and do what you think is best.
SURGEON
I’m sorry, nurse. While it is sad and tragic that these men are dying…
It would be immoral for me to actively kill this one.
Ghostly image of brain looking at the brain
SIS (narrating)
For the most part, however, you don’t stop to noodle through everything you do. If you’ve been properly socialized, you have a lifetime of training in what’s right and wrong — you don’t have to think about it any more than you have to think about your name… or how to walk. You just intuitively know what to do.
It’s not conscious… It’s
CONSCIENCE
Your conscience lets you step outside of yourself to assess your conduct from society’s perspective.
One way is to imagine yourself doing something, and judging whether it would be okay.
GHOST BRAIN (singing)
I’m on the outside… I’m looking in…
Fork in the road with signpost “DO THIS” and “DO THAT” with the “do this” path blocked by “ROAD CLOSED” and “NOT AN OPTION” barriers.
SIS (narrating)
In a way, your conscience limits what options are even available to you, regulating your behavior before you even start.
The more well-socialized you are, the more your conscience keeps you on the straight and narrow — even when nobody else is around to see!
You’re demonstrating good character — another way of saying worth!
And that’s a powerful mechanism of human social regulatio-
Sis making an X “time out” gesture.
SIS
Now stop for a moment. Just… stop.
This internal self-regulation stuff is all well and good…
But if you ask me, it’s all secondary!
It all depends on what other people would consider “acceptable.”
What’s primary has to be what your community already feels is “right” or “wrong.”
Sis, looking frazzled but triumphant
SIS
So if you don’t mind, I’d like to explore the external ways that we humans regulate each other’s behavior.
Without politics…
Without princes, presidents, or potentates…
But with…
…with what? What? Pomegranites? Patronage? Pandemonium? …WHAT?
On another note, I’ve finally gotten around to creating an Instagram for this comic. I’m going to try to post process art and ideas there while I’m working on each page. https://www.instagram.com/law.comic/
If you like this comic and would like to help me post pages more frequently, you can contribute to my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/nathanburney. My sexy, sexy Patrons get to see each page before it goes live, at 4X the resolution, and more!
Thanks for reading, you are awesome!
Saying that people want worth gives you the same problems as claiming that people act to maximize utility: What exactly is “worth”? How do you measure it? Does worth have any significance besides being the thing that people maximize? You aren’t giving the “blood” theory enough credit. There is evidence that both humans and animals follow Hamilton’s rule. | NIH link | Silverchair link |
So I think that what is really driving the desire for worth, money, and everything else is the desire to maximize our inclusive fitness.
You are absolutely right that I am not giving kin selection as much credit as others do. Because in humans our bonding is less about recognizing biological kin by their scent and pheromones etc., and more about learning by experience who is on our side. And because we are not stuck with biological kin recognition, we will see that what COUNTS as “our side” is going to change as society grows larger and more complex. As will the ways in which we learn who is on our side. That will be an important topic in the coming pages, so I won’t spoil it by saying more now.
As for worth, I am not talking about self-worth or “me” utility. I am talking about worth in the eyes of others — being valued by others as someone worthy of their cooperation, trust, loyalty, love… worthy of their support as “one of us.” HOW people decide you’re worthy has already been suggested in the preceding pages, but will be the explicit subject of the next page. So I hope I do a good job of it!
As for how one measures worth, it’s emotional and thus not readily quantifiable. How do you measure how much you are loved? Nevertheless, your brain is keenly attuned to the social signals that indicate whether or not the people around you accept you. And we’ve evolved some sophisticated processing circuitry to interpret that data, make sense of it, and respond appropriately, very little of which is conscious.
Self-awareness of whether you’re meeting social expectations seems to be localized in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC). It’s kind of like pre-emptively feeling about yourself the way your brain imagines others would feel about you. A form of empathy, simulating how others must feel, tweaked to a recursive meta level with your own thoughts and deeds as the reference. The Worth-O-Meter involves the pACC and other places in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). The MPFC is heavily involved in simulation and daydreaming and planning, and it imagines how others would morally judge you. When you perceive socially significant inputs, your MPFC makes the judgment call, and alerts the relevant brain regions that need to act on it. If positive rewards are in order, for example, it notifies the striatum. If negative restraints, then the insula. Interestingly (and I don’t think I mentioned this), your Worth-O-Meter processes respond much more strongly when you think others can see you. And they respond MOST strongly when the people who can see you aren’t strangers or mere acquaintances, but are people whose opinion matters to you. These processes develop throughout childhood, with a major burst in adolescence, when your sensitivity to social status goes from rudimentary to rocket fuel practically overnight. Remember being mortified and hyper-self-aware in your early teens? That was your brain suddenly turning your Worth-O-Meter into overdrive. It makes sense that it would happen then—just as with getting more adventurous, you couldn’t hide behind mommy’s skirts any more but had to go out and function as an autonomous adult.
Self-regulation, subverting personal utility and self-serving urges that conflict with pro-social behavior, also involves the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Especially the right-DLPFC. That wad of neurons plays a big part in moral decisionmaking, choosing between options, navigating through complex social situations, and inferring the intentions of others. It also plays a role in your working-memory buffer. (Thanks, DLFPC!) In a normally-socialized brain, the DLFPC weights its decisions with a preference for inter-personal fairness over personal gain or utility. Which is hardly surprising in such a social animal. It’s the bit that stays your hand and says DON’T take the largest piece of cake, DON’T lie cheat or steal, DON’T take advantage of others. It would be inappropriate, it would be wrong—it may not even let your conscious thoughts see the inappropriate choice as an option.
If your unconscious processes are good at subverting your private wants, we say you have good impulse control. As if your conscious mind has any say in the matter. It means you are well-socialized, civilized, and worthy of our acceptance. If you have bad impulse control, there’s something wrong with you. You’re antisocial, uncivilized, even criminal, and likely to be excluded.
You have a very cool circuit between your superior colliculus, pulvinar, and superior temporal sulcus (SC-Pul-STS) that reads people’s facial expressions and interprets their social meaning. These expressions are themselves almost entirely autonomic, and controlled by social processing circuits without any conscious input whatsoever (you ever try to blush on purpose?). We have an astonishing range of emotional responses displaying very subtle and precise reactions, far more than other social mammals, and we’ve got the processing power to interpret them at once. The SC-Pul-STS is also very good at telling when someone’s faking an expression. It pays special attention to facial expressions that indicate approval or disapproval, whether what you are doing is acceptable or worthy. Your pACC also gets involved in detecting and signaling internal emotional states, especially those important for social bonding, like laughter and crying, embarrassment, etc. Your anterior insula both feels and registers disgust, your amygdala both feels and senses fear… Social regulation is a whole-brain job!
This isn’t the place to go into great detail, but it’s a really cool subject, and still very much an area of active research. I mean, I wrote my outline for this section more than a year ago, and just between then and now new studies have continued to be published that have made me go back and tweak things (even though most of it will never get used in the comic). I started studying up on neuroscience back in 2008, when fMRI was being touted as a lie detector in criminal cases, and in just the eleven years since then, researchers in the field have made astonishing discoveries. Neuroscience is continuously challenging the more philosophical aspects of psychology, anthropology, economics, sociology, and the law. My profession even has a specialty called “neurolaw.” And… I forget where I was going with this. I’m rambling again, aren’t I. I’d better get back to work.
What would you say is probably different about or within the brain of someone who experiences no or extremely little emotional pain when rejected by others in any way, including from being dumped, but does care about behaving ethically (by his own standards), and finds fulfillment in helping others?
Do they cover any neurology or anthropology in law school?
Neurolaw is a growing field, believe it or not. Anthropology is something you should have gotten in undergrad before going to law school (along with History, Economics, Philosophy…)
The question I’m asked, I’m actually interested in it. (I see how the original question may not have seemed serious.) What might cause an unusually high capacity for tolerating social rejection? Could it just be a high pain tolerance, or something unusual about serotonin receptors or levels, or something else?
As is much of the stuff that’s being presented in this comic, the answer to your question is an area of current research. Here’s something to get you started: [Link]
What does it mean to be “on our side”? If it means having a tendency to give us the hormones that make us happy or increase our inclusive fitness, then we are back to the utility maximization and kin-selection theories. If worth in the eyes of others is what we really want, and worth in the eyes of others involves suppressing or subverting our private wants, then are those private wants not what we really want? If so, what are they? I agree with you that we have a desire to be seen favorably by people we care about, and that that involves suppressing or denying certain other desires. I just think that the desire to be seen favorably and the desires that conflict with it are both rooted in inclusive fitness.
Your argument is compelling, but I’ll be interested in seeing how you reconcile self-regulation with the inherently hard problems of cliques (small mutually self-reinforcing social groups that optimize their behavior to the benefit of themselves at the expense of others), competing interests (two individuals or cliques want the same thing that can’t be shared), and information lag (I thought my action was helpful or neutral, but learned later that it did harm).
I can’t find a citation at the moment, but remember a study that showed two normal people, each abdicating moral responsibility for their actions to another, could function as a single sociopath.
Specifically, one person had control of a button that administered electric shock to a test subject. Another person had the authority to say when the first one should push the button. The button-pushers fell into a “just doing what I was told” mindset, assigning responsibility for the shocks to the decision-makers. The decision-makers fell into a “my hands are clean” mindset, and assigned responsibility for the shocks to the button-pushers.
Wander away and forget to check in this comic for half a year or more, right in the middle of a bunch of uptight delegates discussion constitutional law, then I come back to a page of topless ladies, illegal drugs, firey hormone icons dropping f-bombs and pictures of people having sex. Had to double check I was in the right place. . .
Welcome back! There is method to my madness. Now if I can just figure out a way to crank these pages out faster…
I do wonder, however, how far the whole thing holds together after the Bronze Age and the development of agriculture, when human organization changes to favor large, strong males who specialize in violence, and there’s increasing ability and incentive to prevent voluntary disassociation from the group (by which I mean the rise of slavery), both of which allow antisocial dicks much greater chances of survival.
…Or am I getting a couple strips ahead of us here?
We’ll just have to see! ;)