How does love help us survive?
Dr. Anna MachinLove can make us act against logic and reason. It can make us irrational. It can make us forget about our own best interests, or even risk our own safety. Why have we developed such a strong instinct to love, when in so many ways it would be easier not to?
Learn about this Garden Talk
In order to survive, humans have to exist within a hierarchy, compete for resources and cooperate between the sexes - the most complex cooperation of all. Ideally, we would be solitary. So what has evolution come up with to make sure we start and then invest in our survival-critical relationships? Love.
We are the most cooperative species on the planet in terms of the number of ties we have, the context of those ties and their enduring nature. We need to cooperate to subsist, to raise our children and to learn, but cooperation is costly and stressful - possibly even life-threatening - because people lie, cheat and steal.
Evolutionary anthropologist Dr. Anna Machin is fascinated by what makes humans behave the way they do, and uses a full range of disciplines and techniques – from genetic analysis to experimental psychology - to find out. Anna joins us in The Garden to explore the origins of love.
Talk outline
50 minutes
Stress & the Body
About the Fellow
Anna started her career as a primatologist in zoos around Europe. Today, she's an evolutionary anthropologist, and is world-renowned for her pioneering work on human love and fatherhood.
Thank you notes from Garden members
Stress & the Body Collection
Stress. Your heart races, you feel overwhelmed, you may get dizzy or hot or sweaty. At some point in our lives we have all experienced that feeling, but what is actually happening to our bodies from a scientific perspective when our minds are under stress?Meditation - training your attention and awareness to reach a calm and stable state - is an ancient practice found all over the world and used in the modern day to manage stress. What's going on in your brain when you achieve this level of focus?
Stress starts in the mind, but it can take an enormous toll on the body too. Left unchecked, it can even prove fatal. What is stress, from a scientific perspective, and how does it wreak havoc on our bodies when we're in a state of burnout?
Humans are information-seeking beings at heart. But while technology has given us unprecedented access to the data we crave, it has created a deluge of side effects. How are we adapting to information and stimulation overload?
Humans have created art to provoke laughter for millennia. Why does comedy work, and what does it reveal about the counterintuitive biology of the human brain?
How we eat and the impact it has on our bodies, from weight loss and weight gain to eating disorders, is complex and a key facet of human health. But most of these behaviours and conditions aren't unique to our species. What can the animal world teach us?
Love can make us act against logic and reason. It can make us irrational. It can make us forget about our own best interests, or even risk our own safety. Why have we developed such a strong instinct to love, when in so many ways it would be easier not to?
