The Adaptive Value and Neurochemistry of Heartbreak

Maria Popova gives us this tidbit from Jesse Bering’s Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?: And Other Reflections on Being Human, a look at the social and chemical biology underlying some of humanity’s idiosyncracies.

Could heartbreak be an adaptive trait of an empathic species like ours? Do we hurt in order to spare relationships at all costs? And what has that done to our evolutionary genetics? What traits have we reinforced in our battle to save each other’s feelings?

[O]ne of the more fascinating things about the resignation/despair stage is the possibility that it actually serves an adaptive function that may help to salvage the doomed relationship, especially for an empathetic species such as our own…. [H]eartbreak is not easily experienced at either end, and when your actions have produced such a sad and lamentable reaction in another person, when you watch someone you care about (but no longer feel any real long-term or sexual desire to be with) suffer in such ways, it can be difficult to fully extricate yourself from a withered romance. If I had to guess — in the absence of any studies that I’m aware of to support this claim — I’d say that a considerable amount of genes have replicated in our species solely because, with our damnable social cognitive abilities, we just don’t have the heart to break other people’s hearts.


More at Brain Pickings.

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