About Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long
Daniel Z. Lieberman, M.D. is professor and vice chair for clinical affairs in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University. Dr. Lieberman is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a recipient of the Caron Foundation Research Award, and he has published over 50 scientific reports on behavioral science. He received his medical degree and completed his psychiatric training at New York University.
Trained as a physicist, Michael E. Long is an award-winning speechwriter, screenwriter, and playwright. A popular speaker and educator, Mr. Long has addressed audiences around the world, including in a keynote at Oxford University. He teaches writing at Georgetown University, where he is a former director of writing. Mr. Long pursued undergraduate studies at Murray State University and graduate studies at Vanderbilt University.
About The Book
“In your brain the down world is managed by a handful of chemicals—neurotransmitters, they’re called—that let you experience satisfaction and enjoy whatever you have in the here and now. But when you turn your attention to the world of up, your brain relies on a different chemical—a single molecule—that not only allows you to move beyond the realm of what’s at your fingertips, but also motivates you to pursue, to control, and to possess the world beyond your immediate grasp. It drives you to seek out those things far away, both physical things and things you cannot see, such as knowledge, love, and power. Whether it’s reaching across the table for the salt shaker, flying to the moon in a spaceship, or worshipping a god beyond space and time, this chemical gives us command over every distance, whether geographical or intellectual.
Those down chemicals – call them the Here & Nows – allow you to experience what’s in front of you. They enable you to savor and enjoy, or perhaps to fight or run away, right now. The up chemical is different. It makes you desire what you don’t yet have, and drives you to seek new things. It rewards you when you obey it, and makes you suffer when you don’t. It is the source of creativity and, further along the spectrum, madness; it is the key to addiction and the path to recovery; it is the bit of biology that makes an ambitious executive sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, that makes successful actors and entrepreneurs and artists keep working long after they have all the money and fame they ever dreamed of; and that makes a satisfied husband or wife risk everything for the thrill of someone else. It is the source of the undeniable itch that drives scientists to find explanations and philosophers to find order, reason, and meaning.
It is why we look into the sky for redemption and God; it is why heaven is above and earth is below. It is fuel for the motor of our dreams; it is the source of our despair when we fail. It is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper.
It is also why we are never happy for very long.
To your brain, this single molecule is the ultimate multipurpose device, urging us, through thousands of neurochemical processes, to move beyond the pleasure of just being, into exploring the universe of possibilities that come when we imagine. Mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish all have this chemical inside their brains, but no creature has more of it than a human being. It is a blessing and a curse, a motivation and a reward. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, plus a single nitrogen atom — it is simple in form and complex in result. This is dopamine, and it narrates no less than the story of human behavior.”
Dopamine is probably one of the most talked-about brain chemicals. And for good reason.
I picked up The Molecule of More because I wanted to understand what all the fuss was about. How does dopamine actually work? How does it shape our behaviour? And, most importantly, can we use this knowledge to live happier, more fulfilling lives?
In The Molecule of More, Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long explore the fascinating role dopamine plays in our everyday lives. Drawing on research from neuroscience, psychology and social science, they explain how this one brain chemical fuels our desires, sparks creativity, drives ambition and even makes us fall in love.
The science is fascinating, but what I particularly enjoyed is how the authors make complex ideas surprisingly easy to understand. It’s an eye-opening, thought-provoking read that might just change the way you think about motivation, happiness and why we always seem to want just a little bit more.
The book is packed with fascinating insights, and in these notes, I’ll share a few of my favourites.
Let’s dive in!
Key Insights
Why Wanting Something And Enjoying It Are Two Very Different Things.
“Dopamine isn’t the pleasure molecule, after all. It’s the anticipation molecule. To enjoy the things we have, as opposed to the things that are only possible, our brains must transition from future-oriented dopamine to present-oriented chemicals, a collection of neurotransmitters we call the Here and Now molecules, or the H&Ns. Most people have heard of the H&Ns. They include serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins (your brain’s version of morphine), and a class of chemicals called endocannabinoids (your brain’s version of marijuana). As opposed to the pleasure of anticipation via dopamine, these chemicals give us pleasure from sensation and emotion. In fact, one of the endocannabinoid molecules is called anandamide, named after a Sanskrit word that means joy, bliss, and delight.”
For a long time, dopamine was considered the brain’s pleasure molecule – the feel-good chemical responsible for making us happy. And it makes sense. After all, dopamine is often active when we experience something pleasurable.
But years of research have revealed something fascinating: dopamine is less about pleasure itself and more about the anticipation of pleasure.
It’s the chemical that gets us excited about new possibilities, fuels our motivation, and pushes us to pursue goals, explore new things and create something extraordinary.
But here’s the catch.
Once we get what we want – a new house, a promotion, or even a new romantic partner – the novelty eventually wears off. What once felt exciting becomes familiar, and the dopamine-driven thrill begins to fade.
Suddenly, we’re looking for the next big thing.
So, how do we actually enjoy what we already have?
That’s where a different group of brain chemicals comes in. The authors call them the Here and Now molecules (H&Ns) – neurotransmitters that help us experience pleasure, joy and contentment in the present moment.
Interestingly, the brain circuits associated with these chemicals can compete with, and sometimes even suppress, dopamine-driven activity. In other words, wanting something and enjoying something aren’t quite the same thing.
And this explains something rather interesting about relationships. Falling in love is often fuelled by dopamine. Staying in love requires learning to enjoy the here and now.
It’s also one of the reasons we experience hedonic adaptation – that frustrating tendency to get used to the very things we once desperately wanted.
P.S. If you’re curious about how to keep love alive long after the initial dopamine rush fades, I highly recommend Happy Together by Suzann Pileggi Pawelski and James Pawelski. It’s a wonderful book that applies the principles of positive psychology to building happier, more fulfilling romantic relationships.
Why We Want Things We Don’t Even Enjoy (And What Self-Control Has To Do With It)
“It’s natural to confuse wanting and liking. It seems obvious that we would want the things that we will like having. That’s how it would work if we were rational creatures, and despite all evidence to the contrary, we persist in thinking that we are rational creatures. But we’re not. Frequently we want things that we don’t like. Our desires can lead us toward things that may destroy our lives, such as drugs, gambling, and other out-of-control behaviors.
The dopamine desire circuit is powerful. It focuses attention, motivates, and thrills. It has a profound influence over the choices we make. Yet it isn’t all-powerful. Addicts get clean. Dieters lose weight. Sometimes we switch off the TV, get off the couch, and go for a run. What kind of circuit in the brain is powerful enough to oppose dopamine? Dopamine is. Dopamine opposing dopamine. The circuit that opposes the desire circuit might be called the dopamine control circuit.”
Our brain has two major dopamine circuits that play very different roles.
The first is the dopamine desire circuit. It’s the one that makes us want things – whether it’s a delicious piece of chocolate cake, a shiny new gadget, or a promotion at work.
The second is the dopamine control circuit. Its job is to help us plan, make decisions, resist impulses and figure out how to get what we want.
But here’s where things get interesting.
Our desire circuit doesn’t always have our best interests at heart. It can make us crave things we don’t even particularly enjoy. And sometimes, those cravings become so powerful that they override our better judgement. This is one of the mechanisms involved in addiction, whether to substances or certain behaviours.
Think about it. Have you ever found yourself eating an entire chocolate bar when you only wanted one square? Scrolling social media for an hour when you meant to check one message? Or buying something ridiculously expensive on impulse, only to regret it the next day?
That’s your desire system pulling you towards an immediate reward.
And this is where the dopamine control circuit comes into play. It helps us pause, consider the consequences and choose what we really want over what feels tempting in the moment.
Of course, knowing what we should do and actually doing it are two very different things!
That’s why self-regulation and self-control are such important executive functioning skills. They help us manage impulses, resist temptations and delay gratification in pursuit of something more meaningful.
And they’re not just essential for adults. They’re among the most valuable skills we can help our children develop, too.
P.S. If you’re curious about how technology companies and digital platforms tap into our reward systems to keep us hooked, I highly recommend Irresistible by Adam Alter. It’s a fascinating (and slightly unsettling!) exploration of behavioural addiction in our modern world.
Dopamine and Success
“Success takes years of hard work and so many revisions to the original idea that it’s barely recognizable by the time it gets to market. It’s not enough to just imagine the future. To bring an idea to fruition we must struggle with the uncompromising realities of the physical world. We need not only knowledge but also tenacity. Dopamine, the chemical of future success, is there to deliver.”
Yep. To succeed you need grit. And grit depends on dopamine.
Remember Angela Duckworth’s formula for grit: Interest + Practice + Purpose + Hope? Dopamine is the main driver for all four components. Lieberman and Long add:
“The ability to put forth effort is dopaminergic. The quality of that effort can be influenced by any number of other factors, but without dopamine, there is no effort at all.”
And yes, growth mindset depends on dopamine as well. When you focus on progress, you see the immediate mini-success. Step by step. This success activates the dopamine reward system. And it directly affects your perseverance.
No magic. Just brain chemistry.
The Source of Creativity
“Oshin Vartanian, a researcher at York University in Toronto, wanted to figure out what part of the brain was most active when people discovered novel solutions to problems, so he scanned people’s brains while they were solving a problem that required creativity. He found that when they discovered the solution to the problem, the front of their brains on the right side was activated. He wondered if this part of the brain was also involved in model breaking.
In a second experiment he asked participants not to solve a problem but simply to use their imagination. First he asked them to imagine real things, such as “a flower that is a rose.” Then he asked them to imagine things that don’t exist, things that don’t fit the conventional model of reality, such as “a living thing that is a helicopter.” With the volunteers in the scanner, he found that the same part of the brain lit up as before, but only when participants thought about objects that did not exist in life. When they imagined reality itself, the region stayed dark.
Brain scans of people with schizophrenia show changes in that same area, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Maybe it’s because when we are being creative, we behave a little bit like a person with schizophrenia. We stop inhibiting aspects of reality that we had previously written off as unimportant, and we attach salience to things we once thought were irrelevant.”
But here’s another fascinating twist.
Our brains don’t stop being creative when we fall asleep.
During sleep, our brains remain remarkably active, and dopamine is one of the chemicals involved in regulating sleep and dreaming. This might be part of the story behind those wonderfully bizarre dreams where completely unrelated people, places and events somehow fit together.
You know, those dreams where you’re having dinner with your old maths teacher on a spaceship, and somehow it all makes perfect sense?
Even more interestingly, research suggests that sleep can help us make creative connections and find solutions to problems we’ve been struggling with while awake.
There’s even a technique called dream incubation, which involves focusing on a particular question or problem before falling asleep in the hope that your dreaming mind will explore it.
The evidence is still developing, but I find the idea fascinating: sometimes, the most productive thing you can do when you’re stuck on a problem is simply to sleep on it.
Literally.
Loss Aversion Explained
“When scientists performed brain scans during wagering experiments, they naturally looked at dopamine first. They found that neural activity in the desire circuit increased after wins and decreased after losses—as would be expected. But the changes weren’t symmetrical. The magnitude of the decrease after losses was larger than the increase after gains. The dopamine circuit was mirroring the subjective experience. The effect of loss was greater than the effect of gain.
What neural pathways were behind this imbalance? What was amplifying the loss reaction? The researchers turned their attention to the amygdala — an H&N structure that processes fear and other negative emotions. Every time a participant lost a bet, their amygdala fired up, intensifying feelings of distress. It was H&N emotion that was driving loss aversion. The H&N system doesn’t care about the future. It doesn’t care about things we might get. It cares about what we have right now. And when those things are threatened, out comes the experience of fear and distress.”
That explains Kahneman’s Prospect Theory from the neuroscience point of view.
Our System 1 – aka autopilot – highly depends on neurotransmitters in our brain. And they often lead us into cognitive traps.
Fascinating.
Finding Balance – How to Get Off The Dopamine Treadmill
Even though dopamine makes up a rather small portion of our brain chemicals, it profoundly impacts our lives. It drives us forward, fuels our ambitions and keeps us wanting more. But that constant pursuit of more can also get in the way of wellbeing.
The authors suggest that the secret to a fulfilling life lies in balancing the excitement of chasing what we want with the joy of appreciating what we already have.
So, how do we find that balance? Here are a few practical ideas:
- Develop Mastery – “Mastery is the point at which dopamine bows to H&N. Having done all it can do, dopamine pauses, and allows H&N to have its way with our happiness circuits. Even if it’s only for a short time, dopamine doesn’t fight the feeling of contentment. It approves. The best basking is basking in a job well done. Mastery also creates a feeling of what psychologists call an internal locus of control.”To develop mastery, you need deliberate practice, growth mindset, and optimism.
- Spend more time in nature – it’s a complex environment that resets our brain, boosts performance and help to balance dopamine with H&Ns.
- Multitask less – it’s not productive and stressful for our brain (and this type of stress leads to fatigue and burnout).
- Spend more time in the present – practice mindfulness and enjoy little things in your life.
- Work with your hands – create stuff! “Each project is a problem that needs to be solved—a dopaminergic activity—and then the solution is made real. Sometimes solving repair problems requires creativity because the necessary tools or supplies aren’t available. For example, figuring out that a nail clipper can be used as a wire cutter. Fixing things also boosts self-efficacy and increases one’s sense of control: H&N delivering dopaminergic gratification.”
This also reminds me of 12 happiness activities from Sonja Lyubomirsky’s great book The How of Happiness, and to me they are all about balancing dopamine with H&Ns!
How is your dopamine and H&Ns balance?
Action Steps For You:
- Strengthen your dopamine control circuit. Practise self-regulation by resisting small temptations, delaying gratification and making conscious choices instead of acting on impulse.
- Put your dreams to work. Stuck on a problem? Try dream incubation: focus on a question before bed and see whether sleep brings a fresh perspective.
- Make more room for the here and now. Prioritise activities that help you slow down and enjoy the present – take a walk in nature, meditate, get creative with your kids or develop mastery in something you love, whether it’s cooking, gardening or playing a sport.
Quotes From The Book:
“Dopamine has a very specific job: maximizing resources that will be available to us in the future; the pursuit of better things.”
“The control circuit can be crafty. Sometimes it charges straight ahead and dominates a situation through the power of confidence. Other times it leads to submissive behaviors that induce others to cooperate with us, multiplying our ability to get things done and reach our goals. Dopamine yields not just desire but also domination. It gives us the ability to bend the environment and even other people to our will. But dopamine can do more than give us dominion over the world: it can create entirely new worlds, worlds that may be so astonishing, they could have been created only by a genius—or a madman.”
“Dopaminergic people tend to be creative. They also work well with abstract concepts. They like to pursue novelty and have a general dissatisfaction with the status quo.”
“Dopamine-producing cells make up 0.0005 percent of the brain. That’s a tiny fraction of the cells we use to navigate our world. And yet, when we think about who we are in the deepest sense, we think about that tiny cluster of cells. We identify with our dopamine. In our minds, we are dopamine.”
“We have to overcome the seduction of endless dopaminergic stimulation and turn our backs on our never-ending hunger for more. If we are able to intermingle dopamine with H&N, we can achieve that harmony. All dopamine all the time is not the path to the best possible future. It’s sensory reality and abstract thought working together that unlocks the brain’s full potential. Operating at its peak performance, it becomes capable of producing not only happiness and satisfaction, not only wealth and knowledge, but a rich mixture of sensory experience and wise understanding, a mixture that can set us down the path toward a more balanced way of being human.”
“Dopamine…isn’t about pleasure at all. Dopamine delivers a feeling much more influential. Understanding dopamine turns out to be the key to explaining and even predicting behavior across a spectacular range of human endeavors: creating art, literature, and music; seeking success; discovering new worlds and new laws of nature; thinking about God—and falling in love.”
