Civility costs nothing...

Have humans always treated each other like Americans are treating each other? Why have we given up on gently talking to and politely listening to each other?

I was reminded of these questions the other day when I received a comment on one of the past articles posted on this blog. You may not know that when people post comments about articles, I have the ability to reject them or allow them to be posted as a comment. My job is accept all comments that I don’t agree with and would like all comments to automatically be posted.

The only two criteria I have for not allowing comments to be posted are quite reasonable. The first is some form of identification. Public discourse is not possible if you don’t know who you are talking with. Therefore, people who make comments but don’t identify themselves will not see their comment appear on the blog.

Any comments that demean other people are also rejected. This second criteria means that comments must be polite, respectful and reasonably rational. Unfortunately, the most recent comment has violated both of these standards. Before explaining this further, I’m interested in putting this comment into a broader context.

Some people think Americans have become more uncivil and rude than necessary. For example, this summer the media has reported such bad behavior in local town hall meetings. Town hall meetings have a long history in this country. They began in New England and were examples of "direct democracy" in action where people could gather to discuss and decide issues of interest such as politics and health concerns. Each person was respectfully given a chance to speak while others listened and responded.

For the most part, these town hall meetings were courteous except for vocal minorities who believed their point of view was so correct that any means justified their behavior. Shouting, pushing behavior got a few people arrested for assault. I find it hard to believe this could be called democracy in action.
We also see this rudeness on television talk shows and hear similar behavior from the so-called shock jocks. Shouting instead of listening, name-calling, making comments unsupported by the facts are becoming more common. This lack of social graces could be written off if it weren’t for the fact that it improves ratings. It improves ratings because more people are watching.

Why do so many people find this kind of interchange so fascinating? Why not watch professional wrestling or cage fighting? Are we entering a new era where we are redefining what democracy is all about? Have we become a people who want to open our screaming mouths while keeping our minds closed to opinions that bother us?

We have been a nation that has been proud of our ability to settle our differences with civility and respect (oh well, the civil war only happened once). Now, some people have even said publicly that since they have a president they didn’t vote for and don't agree with, then he deserves to die. Our country was founded on the concept of free speech but it seems that freedom of speech only belongs to those who agree with us.

Sociologists are telling us of increased incivility in the work place. This often takes the form of an intimidating boss or supervisor. These people will display angry outbursts, degrade employees publicly, and even threaten them. Research at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion Institute in Israel found that managers who display public anger and have temper tantrums are perceived as getting better results than those managers who treat subordinates with dignity. This unacceptable bullying behavior may work — and result in promotions — because the corporate ethos often identifies these bosses as people "who gets things done."

Another more recent venue for uncouth and graceless behavior is the Internet. In years past, people would rant by sending a letter to the editor of the local newspaper but they would also identify themselves by signing their name. This way everyone could know who was saying what. Scientists are always disagreeing with one another but they are fully identified as to their speciality and academic affiliation.

With the Internet and the ease of having a platform for anyone to make their thoughts public, we are seeing a new form of rudeness and incivility called "flaming." The website WiseGeek defines flaming as,

the often deliberate act of posting or writing messages on Internet bulletin boards and message groups that have the intent of insulting or creating dissent within a group. An Internet flame is often filled with coarse language and personal insults. It is meant to hurt people’s feelings, get them fired up, and not to further conversation on a personal issue. It is never conversational, but it may be meant to upset an entire group, provoking conversation about someone’s flame
or on the practice of flaming in general.

What can make this even worse is not providing any identification by those who flame. Anonymity increases a person’s capacity for informational mischief. Anyone can put written information that consists of unsubstantiated accusations and bully tactics on the Internet and not have to take personal responsibility. The flamer can hide under a cloak of invisibility.

Even when anonymous people give criticism or feedback it can be done in a way that is not constructive. Some people believe this behavior also offers protection which would be absent if it were done in a face-to-face situation. Internet users who use cyberspace and are mean-spirited are called trolls within the Internet community.

Much more could be said about this but it brings me back to the start of this blog. As I mentioned, anonymous blogs and blogs that are disrespectful are rejected on my blog. Disagreements, no matter how severe, are encouraged. Here is what happened.

Someone who was afraid of being known publicly decided to respond to one of my blogs. They very cleverly signed their name, Anonymous. As if I wouldn’t have known this. To make matters worse, they did not even write a single thought of their own but cut and pasted the opinions of others who had a different perspective from those presented in my blog article. They used about a half dozen different sources to present their comments — I’m assuming, to present their beliefs about the matter.

Here is the disrespectful part. They sent twenty-three (yes, 23) emails beginning at 1:28 in the afternoon and continuing throughout the day into the evening. The last one was sent at 7:49 pm. The first seven were sent within the first hour.
Then twenty minutes later, it started again. Three more the next hour. Another 20 minutes went by and ten more cluttered my inbox the following hour.

Twenty-five minutes later the deluge slowed to a dribble: only two more showed up. Then two hours later the coup de grace was delivered with the twenty-third email.

My immediate reaction was the phrase running through my head about "having a life." Then I was puzzled why someone would take almost seven hours to send me quotes by other people. Talk about double anonymity. First, there is no name and then no thinking. This person is really afraid of something.

I’m still wondering what the point of these twenty-three emails was about. Was it a contest to see who could get the most people to agree on a specific point? This is the way junior high kids argue. Presenting a dissenting case does not rest on how many agree with you. It based on the evidence and rationale a person can bring to bear rather than finding people to quote.

Was this an attempt to overwhelm me with the opinions of Ph.D. writers who we all know are really smart. I was overwhelmed alright, but not as it was intended. My email box was cluttered and I had to waste my time reading this stuff.

Maybe the invisible Anonymous wanted me to feel badly for posting the article. Disappointingly, I did not drop to my knees in chagrin over having written such a bad article.

I’m almost finished with this rant. I don’t know if this person stumbled onto my blog, read one of them and was so incensed that they had to waste half a day trying to overwhelm me with the thoughts and ideas of other people.

Anonymous, if you are reading this, please don’t waste your time and my time again with such foolish antics. If you have something to say, use your own brain, name, and say it. If you are respectful I will put anything you have to say personally (except a lengthy diatribe) in the comments section.

Send me a comment, Anonymous, and tell me who you are and what you think about this article.

What Do Psychologists Do?

Some people, when they think of psychology, think of a counselor talking and listening to someone with problems or feeding a pellet to a rat after it has run a maze correctly or teaching university classes. Others, more rarely, think of that old dinosaur, psychoanalysis. Although these things are part of psychology (the psychoanalysis part is dying a well-deserved death) they are only a very minor part.

Anyone in college knows that psychologists are teachers and researchers in the academic world. Another group of psychologists work in settings like hospitals and mental health clinics. In the latest survey only twenty-nine percent of psychologists were employed in stereotypical jobs such as research, counseling, testing or education. Another twenty-one percent worked in the health care system. Less known are those psychologists who work in other settings such as government, businesses, industry, nonprofit organizations.

Some psychologists work with other psychologists, some work with non-psychological scientists, and a few work independently. Collaboration with other professions helps psychologists contribute to almost every part of our society: politics, military, engineering, computer science, legal, medicine, schools, business and even economics. One psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, even received a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002.

To give you an idea of the wide range of psychological specialities, here is a partial listing of the kinds of psychologists out there. If you are interested in finding out more about any of these specialities, just click on the link.

Cognitive and perceptual psychologists
Developmental psychologists
Educational psychologists
Engineering psychologists
Evolutionary psychologists
Experimental psychologists
Forensic psychologists
Health psychologists
Industrial/organizational psychologists
Sport psychologists
Neuropsychologists (and Behavioral Neuropsychologist)
Clinical Neuropsychologist
Quantitative and measurement psychologists
Rehabilitation psychologists
Social psychologists

It might seem strange that a psychologist would work with the federal government. However, most people don’t know the US Congress has several psychologists. The first was in 1993 when Ted Strickland from Ohio was elected to the House of Representatives. Today, psychologists are politically active not only at the federal level but also in many state governments.

Psychologists also act as consultants to government agencies. Psychologist Baruch Fischhoff, who is a cognitive psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, is a consultant for two federal agencies. He is an advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee. In his free time he chairs the Risk Communication Advisory Committee with the Food & Drug Administration. He is committed to using psychology to help government make policies and procedures more useable and efficient. Four years ago he explained to Congress how they could improve their communication with the American public.

You may have heard of Sport Psychology. This relatively new field of psychology began in Germany in 1920 with the founding of a laboratory devoted to sport psychology. Since then sport psychology has developed its own journals and training programs around the world. As you would expect, sport psychologists spend a lot of their time helping coaches and athletes with performance enhancement. They also try to help younger athletes discover ways in which physical activity can improve personal development. Sport psychologists are often former athletes, some of whom participated professionally in their sport. Dr. Roland Carlstedt who used to be a professional tennis player, coach and consultant is now the head of The American Board of Sport Psychology. His goal is to put sport psychology on a more scientific footing by minimizing guesswork and opinions about how to make athletes perform better.

Have you ever heard of a Violent Crime Resource Specialist? This is Dr. Kristen Beyer’s job description. She is a psychologist who works for the FBI conducting research on child abductors who murder and those who are serial murderers. She also is a counselor for the FBI employee-assistance program. Working alongside trained agents, Dr. Beyer helps them with any significant behavioral aspects of a case and can often provide them with valuable input based on her psychological expertise.

Some people will complete a doctoral degree in a specific field and then, instead of practicing their profession, will write about it. Some journalists who comment on legal issues, medical questions, or science problems have Ph.D.’s but really enjoy educating the public about their specialty area. One such person is psychologist, Laura Helmuth, Ph.D. who decided to look at psychology from the outside rather than the inside. She became a science writer specializing in the many areas that psychology touches. She now writes articles from a psychological perspective for the prestigious Science magazine.

Who would have thought a psychologist would be working for Microsoft? Paul ElRif, Ph.D. is one of a several psychologists at Microsoft who call themselves "usability engineers." These psychologists work with software developers to help make software easier to use. Dr. ElRIf does this by collecting information on what end users need and how they behave when using certain software. His data is collected through the use of customer roundtables and focus groups. The human element provided by Dr. ElRif helps the software developers make a product less mysterious and more accessible to those of us who use software (are there any people left who don’t use it?)

What do you suppose a psychologist does for a police department. Police psychology gained prominence years ago with the Los Angeles Police Department. Today there is a department within LAPD called the Behavioral Science Services unit. This department, headed by psychologist Dr. Debra Glasser, not only provides counseling for personnel and their families, but is involved in life and death matters that face law enforcement on a daily basis. Her team of psychologists are present during hostage negotiations, SWAT call-outs and are members of the Critical Incident Response Team. They also engage in ongoing research projects related to law enforcement.

Technology and education seem made for each other. Almost every school has computers. Students take notes on laptops, get class assignments through the Internet, and stay in touch with classmates using their cell phones. Psychology is making contributions in the field of technology and education. Dr. Marita Franzke used to work in the usability lab of U.S. West before they were taken over by Qwest but now is with Pearson Knowledge Technologies. Her research deals with helping people to learn better through the use of computers.

We all know that NASA is about space exploration: spacecraft, robots, rockets and all that high tech stuff. What about the human element? When we watch important space events, we see lots of people sitting behind consoles anxiously awaiting some technical outcome. When it occurs there is a lot of high fives, laughing and breaking out of the bubbly. Psychologist Robert McCann works at the NASA-Ames Research Center but is not one of those people at the console. His expertise in human information processing has allowed him to work on projects such as how pilots can best use a Head-Up Display in a cockpit. These "HUDs" project a picture of the instrument panel onto a glass panel mounted on the inside of the windshield. Consequently, a pilot does not have to look down and away from what is happening outside in order to see and read the aircraft instrumentation. Originally many difficulties had to be worked out because of human perception and how it works. Dr. McCann and his colleagues were able to use the psychology of perception to overcome these problems. Does he like his job? He loves it and believes that "unusual career paths can end up in very rewarding directions!"

So what do psychologists do? The is answer is just about anything that involves humans. Think of something humans do, whether mundane or critical and the likelihood is that a psychologist is lurking close by.

Nothing Is Better than Something

Imagine you have gone to your physician and were told you needed a specific medicine to help you get better. Then your doctor told you that if the medication wasn’t working you could make it stronger by diluting in water. You were told to keep diluting it until there was only one molecule of the medicine left in the water. You were told this small amount of the medication would be extremely strong and would cure what ailed you. Would you have some misgivings about this advice? Most people would leave immediately, never go back and probably report the doctor to the medical board.

Yet, there are people who believe this kind of "medicine" really works. It’s hard to imagine this but millions of people swear this system has helped them with their medical problems. This treatment is called homeopathy. For many people homeopathy is a misunderstood concept. People often think homeopathy describes a remedy that uses natural herbs. This is not what homeopathy is. Regardless of this misconception, it is a popular treatment. If you Google "homeopathy" you will get over a million and a half hits most of which are favorable to homeopathic medicine.

Let me give you some background on what homeopathy real refers to. It was invented in the late eighteenth century by Samuel Hahnemann. He based homeopathy on a philosophy that believed all illness and disease was caused by "disturbances of the life force." Hahnemann lived during a time when the germ theory was just beginning to be understood. Humans had always wondered why people got sick and many ideas over the millennia had been advanced as to why people fell ill.

One of the more common theories on why people got sick was based on the idea that life could only be fully explained on the basis of a mysterious form of energy inherent to all living things. This strange force had nothing to do with the laws of physics and chemistry, however. People who held this view thought a healthy person was one in whom these forces were in balance. One became unhealthy when the forces were out of balance.

Hahnemann believed this vital force could be affected by internal events (like a person’s thoughts) or by circumstances outside an individual. He called this the "law of susceptibility." To cure this imbalance he devised a method based on the notion that "like cures like." In other words if you had a headache, the cure would be based on anything that would give you a headache. If Hahnemann could find a piece of bark or a root that would cause headaches he would then make a potion from it.

Hahnemann observed that if he swallowed a small amount of cinchona bark he would experience symptoms similar to malaria. Cinchona bark is used to produce quinine which in turn is an effective drug for the treatment of malaria. Aha! He thought he had found the miracle cure. Cinchona bark must have the vital force for curing malaria because in high enough doses it can cause malaria (it can’t).

To create the proper medicine for an illness he would find something that could cause symptoms similar to the illness. He would then dilute the chosen substance so much there was not enough toxicity left in the solution. He reasoned that the more he diluted a substance, the more powerful it became because the dilution would make the vital force even stronger. If this was true, then the more he diluted it, the stronger it became. Of course, he had no evidence this was true, it just seemed like a good idea to him.

This Principle of Similarities became the foundation for homeopathy. So, if rotten meat brings on nausea to the point of vomiting, then a solution with trace amounts of rotten meat, he declared, will cure nausea.

How much do homeopaths dilute their curing solutions? More than you can imagine. If you are really sick then serious dilution would be a lengthy process. A very small amount of the first dilution would be diluted again and again. This would be repeated until the initial substance barely existed. What remained would be equivalent to one drop of the cure diluted in all the water on earth.

Homeopathy proponents also believe that literally anything can be a potential remedy. Dr. Harriet Hall, a retired Air Force flight surgeon is convinced that homeopathy is absolute nonsense. When it comes to finding absurd things to act as a cure, her favorite is "eclipsed moonlight." She ponders as to how it is collected in order to prepare the remedy. Let me know if you find how out to harvest eclipsed moonlight.

What keeps this pseudoscience alive is that homeopathic practitioners and their patients swear these treatments work. Of course, swearing and belief do not a treatment make. There are many reasonable explanations why homeopathy "works." One of the strongest reasons is the power of the placebo. Since a placebo can be so effective, a treatment is not considered legitimate by the scientific community unless it can produce effects significantly greater than a placebo treatment would provide.

This is a very stringent standard because people can think a treatment is helping them when, in fact, it is the result of placebo. For example, a study was done where two groups of people were given either morphine for severe pain or an inactive placebo. Here’s the astonishing part. The people getting the "nothing" treatment were told they were getting a powerful new painkiller. The researchers were shocked to find out this group got just as much relief as the group who actually got morphine.

Placebos have been studied so extensively that we now know there is a pecking order of effectiveness. Some placebos work better than others. Here is a list of which placebos work better than others. It looks something like this (This list is taken from "The Placebo Effect" by Harriet Hall in the Skeptic magazine, Volume 15, Number 1, 2009):

1. Placebo surgery works better than placebo injections.
2. Placebo injections work better than a placebo pill.
3. Fake acupuncture also works better than a placebo pill.
4. Pills as capsules work better than pills as tablets.
5. Big pills work better than small pills.
6. The more doses a day, the better.
7. The more expensive the pill, the better it works.
8. The color of the pill makes a difference.

This doesn’t make any rational sense and we only partially understand how a placebo works. So far we know it works and it can work very well. When studies of homeopathic treatment take into account the results of the placebo, homeopathy is left standing naked.

What about "all the studies" supporters of homeopathy quote that show how legitimate homeopathy is? We must realize there are studies and there are studies. It is very easy to do sloppy science. This kind of science can verify all sorts of crazy notions. Consequently, only well-designed studies are acceptable.

To illustrate this point, we can observe the career of Edzard Ernst who is a physician and the world's first professor of complementary medicine. He used to be a passionate support of homeopathy. Then he began to do research. He and his team of researchers have published over 700 papers in scientific journals on alternative medicine. After fifteen years of studying homeopathy, he has concluded that "the evidence points towards a bogus industry that offers patients nothing more than a fantasy." Strong language from someone who used to be inside the camp.

If you are interested in what logic is used by supporters of homeopathy to maintain that it is an effective treatment, you only need to browse the writings of Louise McLean who is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Natural Health. You can find her writings here. You will find an article called, "Homeopathy Facts List – 54 Facts." As you read through this article of "facts" you may quickly realize the "intellectual bankruptcy of the homeopathic belief system." Here are some examples (my comments are in parentheses):

• FACT 10: Outcomes of homeopathic treatment are measured by the LONG TERM curative effects of prescribing and complete eradication of the disease state. (Like scientific medicine is only concerned with short term effects? All measurements of long term effects from homeopathy have found no significant effects.)


• FACT 20: In 200 years, there has never been a single homeopathic medicine recalled, unlike pharmaceutical medicines. (That’s because homeopathic "medicines" are not regulated by any government body. Therefore, they cannot be recalled. The FDA doesn’t regulate treatments that don’t work.)


• FACT 30: The Homeopathic Hospitals are clean, with friendly, well informed staff. The patients are generally pleased with their treatment unlike many orthodox National Health Service hospitals. (She is obviously comparing the best Homeopathic Hospitals with the worst British Hospitals. Even if this were true, I’m not sure how this proves that homeopathy works.)


• FACT 40: Homeopathy can never be properly tested through double blind randomised trials because each prescription is individualised as every patient is unique. Therefore 10 people with arthritis, for example, may all need a different homeopathic medicine. (This is merely an excuse for why all double blind tests of homeopathy have failed. It would be easy to design a test for each of the 10 people who needed 10 different homeopathic medicines. Supporters of homeopathy need to do this if they really want to be accepted as legitimate. I wonder why they have not done so?)


• FACT 50: Hundreds of famous people throughout the past 200 years have enjoyed the benefits of homeopathic medicine. (Hundreds of famous people in the past 200 years have believed in witchcraft, psychics, or other foolishness. The belief of intelligent people is hardly a reliable standard to finding truth. Some of the most gullible alive are members of MENSA.)

What really keeps homeopathy alive is that it is supported by nice people; humans respond to what nice people say. If you were to visit a homeopath you would probably find it to be a very pleasant experience. He would sit and patiently listen to you as you tell your personal story. You might not get this much attention from your MD. The homeopath would make you feel special because he would pick out a "special" treatment designed just for you which would make you feel special. The remedy would be inexpensive and would most likely have little or no side effects (how could there be side effects when there is nothing to cause it?). You would tell your friends that you were very reassured because the homeopath had been interested in you as a person.

Who wouldn’t want to experience this atmosphere along with medical treatment? Scientific medicine could use more of this relational aspect in their treatment. Many of my clients tell me they will change physicians if their physician treats them poorly. Excellent.

The Gold Standard (double blind studies) for deciding what works and what doesn’t is the Gold Standard for a good reason. It minimizes human error and bias that is built into all human researchers, practitioners, and those of us who use treatment services. Hopefully, homeopathy will eventually go the way of bloodletting and purging. Philosopher Daniel Dennett at Tufts University has said that treatments based on "mysterious stuff" need to be relegated "to the trash heap of history." Amen.

Nobody Can Explain Love

Years ago when I became interested in science and would attempt to explain all the exciting things we can learn through science, it was not uncommon to get the rejoinder that "science cannot explain everything" (no scientist ever said it could).

The example that was often given to explain this belief was love. "Science will never be able to explain love." Of course, the human race has made this blunder ever since the dawn of science. Every time some says "Science will never be able to . . ." the prediction inevitably fails.

During my early years, grownups tried to convince me that a car could not be built to exceed sixty miles an hour. Even if the technology could pull this stunt off, I was told the human body would not be able to stand the force of such speeds. At the beginning of the twentieth century the idea of putting someone on the moon was laughable. There is a very long list of common bonehead statements like this and they are the result of our limited imagination. Science fiction writers and other novelists, like Ursala Le Guin, have been able to envision future human achievements that seem incredibly far fetched.

"Nobody can explain love." Like so many statements that have put constraints on scientific endeavors, this one is about to be thrown into the historical dustbin. Love is so powerful, so universal, so . . . unexplainable. Its mystery is probed in poetry, novels, movies, daily conversation and now by science.

You are probably already aware of the fancy tools scientists are using to peer into our brains. The human brain may be the most complicated thing in the universe and we are just barely beginning to understand how it works.

A recent study was conducted at State University of New York, Stony Brook. The researchers studied college students who had recently fallen in love (maybe we should call universities and colleges "love factories.") and the effect it was having on their brains. They watched the brain's reaction when these people were shown pictures of their beloved.

Sure enough, as soon as they glanced at the picture, a specific part of their brain lit up like fireworks. The interesting part is that this part of the brain is the same one that gets lit up for cocaine and nicotine users. It gets flooded with the brain chemical dopamine. We know that dopamine flooding is so rewarding that humans will do almost anything to make it happen.

Another love chemical in the brain goes by the tongue twisting name of isphenylethylamine. It is easier to call it PEA which scientists do. PEA is produced by the brain and is a naturally occurring amphetamine. These chemicals work in tandem. Amphetamines cause brain synapses to release this little, tiny spray of dopamine into the brain. There's the buzz — the same high after someone snorts a line of cocaine.

Using cocaine is illegal, smoking cigarettes should be illegal, but love will never be illegal. Many of my clients have told me that they have kicked highly destructive habits after they have fallen in love. A female client was relieved of her depression when she fell in love; a male client stopped having panic attacks when he fell head over heels for the "most beautiful woman" he had ever seen; a teenage client "cured" her bulimia when she met the perfect boy. And so on.

Guess what happened when these relationships ended? The dopamine no longer overrode the other chemicals that were making these people's lives miserable. This may be why some people have so many relationships. After one fails, they need a fix, another love fix. Some people who are not so intensely caught up in the cycle may still complain they just can't live by themselves and are continually on the prowl for someone to fill that emotional/chemical void.

This is not to say that we should have to enjoy being alone. After all, we are social creatures and find comfort and meaning within relationships. However, the people I have known who enjoy their relationships the most are the ones who are comfortable being by themselves.

Dr. Helen Fisher is a researcher in this field who did a similar experiment with a simple revision. She also showed her subjects a picture of another person who was neutral. You can probably guess the first picture released all the chemicals and the second picture did not get the same response. That is what happened.

Another research project wanted to find out what the brain chemistry was like for couples who had been together for many years. They chose couples who had been married for at least twenty years and said they were still deeply in love. Not surprisingly, their brains also showed increased levels of dopamine. However, something else was discovered.

Have you ever heard older couples talk about how love is even better after the initial burst of chemistry begins to subside? When I was younger, my friends and I thought this was laughable. All we knew was the dopamine high. Well, these scientists found that older love birds had another chemical in their brains called oxytocin. This brain chemical is often called the "cuddling chemical" because it helps new mothers make milk and be more capable of bonding with their babies.

Another brain chemical is released when we start experiencing puberty. Do you remember your days of pre-teen infatuation? How could we forget. This state of mind is caused by still another drug called norepinephrine. Because this is the first experience of a love chemical, pre-teens get jolted by this strong drug and think it is The Real Thing. Not that it doesn't feel good. It is just the brain's way of getting young people together to learn the social skills needed for The Real, Real, Thing (dopamine and associates).

There is no question that love is the result a drug. Anyone who has been addicted to this drug and then done something incredibly stupid will not deny its power. Science and human experience know that love is such a powerful experience that it can completely override common sense and rational decision making. When hit with this emotional genie we can go hungry, avoid sleep and cause our friends to shake their heads in disgust and confusion.

So what does this all mean? Has love now been relegated to something so mundane as a drug? Has science taken away the mystery and excitement of falling in love? I don't think so. Knowledge is always better than ignorance. Do astronomers yawn and become bored when looking at a beautiful galaxy or nebula in their telescope? Most certainly not. They go back again and again to gaze at these heavenly wonders. Do English professors stop reading because they have the ability to dissect and discuss the fine points of an author's work? The opposite is true. They have a deeper appreciation of what they are reading. How about musicians? Does their knowledge of the link between music and neurology of the brain lessen their love of music? Not at all. This type of knowledge enhances the music. Even religious people who read the Bible can have a more profound experience of its contents when they begin to understand the insights of professional scholarship from the last two hundred years.

So in summary, this is what love is about: oxytocin makes you want to cuddle and touch; PEA gets your juices and energizes you to lose sleep; dopamine makes you crave more of what you have; and norepinephrine makes you have sweaty palms and a pounding heart when you are near to or even think of that really special person.

Although we have only mentioned a few brain chemicals, Dr. Mary Cochrane at the University of Buffalo says there are many more chemicals involved in romantic love. Her article, Psychologist Says Neurochemical Processes Explain Romantic Attraction explains what those other chemicals are.

Additional Reading:

Fisher, H. (2004). Why we love: The nature and chemistry of romantic love. (Holt Paperbacks)

Regan, P. (2008). The mating game: A primer on love, sex, and marriage. New York: Sage Publications.