Controversial (for other reasons) neuroscientist Robert Heath found long ago that given the option to self stimulate different brain areas to experience different feelings most people opt to stimulate areas that evoke feelings of mild frustration & anger. Arousal is reinforcing.
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What’s remarkable is they preferred this feeling over sexual arousal, happiness, laughter, drunkenness. Arousal with mild frustration in anger is indeed a drug. It’s just that we make it ourselves. Watch your behavior. Chances are you’re hooked.
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And if you’re going to look up these studies, I’ve covered them before on the podcast, but there’s a collection of them. Not many subjects in each one because it was human self brain stimulation. Those are hard experiments, but if you look across the different experiments it’s a
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What would America look like if believers stepped boldly into the public square? Follow Truth & Liberty to explore how biblical truth can shape our nation.
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@hubermanlab I skimmed Heath’s papers (e.g. 1972 JNMD). They show some aversive/frustration responses, but the strong self-stimulation preference looks like it was for pleasure/sexual sites (B-19 etc). Can you point to where the “preference for frustration” is documented?
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@hubermanlab This fits with the findings of most social media platforms that 'controversy' drives engagement.
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@hubermanlab Some people I know constantly find themselves in painful situations. I think they create them. They like them.
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@hubermanlab So anger isn’t just an emotion, it’s self-distilled dopamine. We choose the drug, then pretend we’re victims of it. The addiction isn’t to outrage—it’s to control disguised as surrender.
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@hubermanlab very interesting! could it be that people are largely conflict avoidant which means anger is not expressed in the moment -- but it is stored up somehow and so there is a desire to tap into it after the fact, to express it/feel it
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@hubermanlab Which podcasts? This feels like a potential "ah-ha" moment. Would really like to hear what you had to say about it.
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In this revealing THINC Voices installment, California high school student Karthi Gottipati shares what happened when he became his school’s student representative to the school board – only to discover that his fellow board members, the adults, weren’t interested in listening to
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