The Love Potions: Oxytocin for Her, Vasopressin for Him
A quick recap: Two weeks ago, in the first issue of this blog, I presented the non-original idea that moral values, and more specifically political values, can be differentiated along two distinct liberal-conservative dimensions: an economic dimension and a social dimension. Looking then at the economic dimension (so far I haven’t discussed the social dimension), I argued that the economic liberals, who are best represented by the bleeding-heart liberals who support expanded welfare programs, are characteristically motivated by compassion for the poor and powerless. Their ideal is, perhaps, Mother Teresa.
Economic conservatives, who are best represented as defenders of relatively-unregulated free enterprise with rewards going to the winners of the competitive game, are motivated more unabashedly by the pursuit of self interest, but with the requirement that certain competitive tactics, such as violence and theft, are prohibited. Their ideal, generally, is the individual who follows the rules and wins the game.
Of course we all have elements of both liberalism and conservatism, which is to say we all exhibit both compassion and self-interest, but especially as regards our attitudes toward the larger society beyond our own family circle, some of us are more driven by compassion for fellow human beings and some of us are more driven by self-interested competition within the rules of the game.
Economic Liberals
The second issue, last week, examined the economic liberal in more detail. I presented the theory that the evolutionary origin of compassion was the need to nurture offspring when it became advantageous to give birth before the child was able to fend for itself as certain more-primitive species can. In other words, there came a time in the evolution of species when further advances in the competition for fitness required the development of brains that were less rigidly hard-wired for specific behaviors and with more flexibility for adaptation to different environments and situations. Particularly when individuals began to associate into packs, tribes, clans, etc., the learning of social skills became important.
In short, when it became advantageous to learn from experience, it became important to give birth to offspring “prematurely,” while their brains were still developing in terms of neural connections (the “software” of their brains) so that that software could reflect what they had learned after birth or after hatching from an egg.
But this meant that the young would not yet be ready, upon birth or hatching, to fend for themselves and to go out into the world to seek their fortunes. Now they were just babies, for God’s sake, and they required nurturing. The resulting improvement in learning ability and mental flexibility was a good evolutionary strategy for our genes (OK, genes don’t have strategies, but they act like they do), but somehow the genes had to persuade their hosts, especially those of the female gender, to buy into this nurturing idea even though there was no evolutionary precedent for making sacrifices on behalf of someone else who just happened to have been expelled from your body. How did the genes do this?
My Genes Made Me Do It
That’s the recap. Now let’s plunge ahead. It appears that our genes manipulated us (actually our predecessor species) to provide the necessary nurturing to our offspring by producing oxytocin, a neurotransmitter that is known to induce strong feelings of maternal love, and that floods through a woman’s brain during childbirth and in other situations that call for nurturing. It primarily affects women because its effect is enhanced by the presence of estrogen and inhibited by the presence of testosterone.
Oxytocin also emerges during lovemaking, and may have a role in a woman’s feelings of love for her partner during sex. While it is not the only “love potion” in the arsenal of the genes — endogenous opioid peptides (EOPs), estrogen, progesterone, adrenaline, serotonin, and cortisol also seem to get involved — oxytocin plays a central role for females.
An equivalent neurotransmitter that primarily affects men (because it’s enhanced by testosterone and probably inhibited by estrogen) is vasopressin. Chemically very similar to oxytocin, vasopressin’s effects, as observed in animal studies, are also to promote care of the young, but apparently in a manner that is more in line with the traditional protective role of fathers rather than the emotionally bonding role of mothers.
The significance of these hormones is that they induce the hosts of the genes to provide the nurturing that allows members of the species to learn from experience and thereby to thrive in competition with other species, as well as with other members of the same species. Once the “love potions” were established as motivators, the motivation could be extended to apply to subjects beyond offspring and mate, to include members of the extended family and others, as long as there were adaptive advantages for that. Thus, we have the origin of the compassion for members of society in general that characterizes all of us, but especially economic liberals.1
I’ll not yet get into a more detailed explanation of the actual manner in which the genes create the hormones and establish the processes that influence our behavior, partly because I need to do some more studying before I would be qualified to do that. Thankfully, my genes have programmed me to learn.
My Circles Are Bigger Than Your Circles
But I want to touch on another element of how compassion relates to the distinction between economic liberals and conservatives. That is the matter of “circle size.” As I pointed out above, we all show compassion, especially within our family, and it is primarily in relation to non-family-members that the liberal-conservative differences emerge. I believe it is helpful to recognize that we are all members of a set of concentric social circles of differing sizes, centered on ourselves. The smallest circle includes only ourself, and we are generally quite devoted to the well being of that circle. Most of us clearly love the sole member of that circle.
The next larger circle includes our closest family members — our children and usually our spouse. Love, more than competition, is generally the motive that drives our relations within that circle, and self-sacrifice on behalf of its members is commonplace.
As we move outward to larger circles — our extended family and close friends, our church or social club members, our community, our nation or race or religion, and finally to all mankind — our relations become characterized less by compassion and progressively more by competition and mistrust, and even fear or sometimes hatred.
More generally we can define a circle of love and willing self-sacrifice, surrounded by a circle of compassion (a milder form of love) that supports a lesser degree of self-sacrifice, surrounded in turn by a circle of wary but generally trusting relations governed by common rules and laws and characterized by civil negotiations instead of self-sacrifice, and finally surrounded by “outsiders,” with whom we share no common laws and against whom we must be constantly on guard and ready to fight.
The real difference between economic liberals and economic conservatives is in the size of their circles. Both groups may feel the same love for family, but the liberal’s circle of compassion is larger than that of the conservative. It may include a wide variety of total strangers whose circumstances inspire compassion, and for some liberals it may include all of humanity and even a wide array of non-human animals. A very few may feel compassion toward plants — not just to protect the environment but in empathy with the plant.
Economic conservatives, on the other hand, draw their circles a little smaller. Not that they feel no compassion for strangers, but their compassion attenuates more quickly, replaced by a more dispassionate “arms-length” relationship, as the subject moves further out. In dealing with the problems of poverty in society, conservatives look more toward structuring economic incentives so as to encourage the poor to lift themselves by their bootstraps and become self-supporting, whereas liberals are more likely to react with simple compassion and provide food and comfort to those in need. The poor fall well within their circle of compassion, not in the more dispassionate circle of negotiation and bargaining.
Some economic liberals recognize no outer boundary beyond which people are “outsiders,” to be regarded with suspicion and fear. They would extend, if not the circle of compassion, at least the circle of trust and negotiation, to include all of humanity. Economic conservatives are more likely to rely on a strong military to protect them from the outsiders than on friendly discussions with fellow human beings who are presumed to be reasonable and agreeable. But confronted by a hungry lion in the jungle, both the liberal and the conservative would agree that they are beyond the circle of negotiation.
The range of emotion from love of family to fear of a mortal threat is the same for both. What differs is the sizes of their circles.
We’re On a Roll, Now
Next week (on Friday morning, as usual) we’ll turn to the origins of economic conservatism, which, I will argue, is an outgrowth of the formation of pre-human and human societies — particularly as they grew larger and more complex — and the consequent need to develop certain social skills. Soon after, we’ll look at the social liberal - conservative scale, which differs significantly from the economic scale. See you around.
