The philosopher Bertrand Russell argued: Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis (London: Allen and Unwin, 1938), 10.
Male fig wasps: Krebs and Davies, An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology, 157.
Given the enormous costs of negotiating rank, many species have shifted to ritualized battles: Ibid., chap. 7.
frogs and toads use the depth of their croaks to negotiate rank: ibid.
boys who were rising to the top of the hierarchy: R. C. Savin-Williams, “Dominance in a Human Adolescent Group,” Animal Behavior 25 (1977): 400–406.
Our nickname paradigm: Keltner et al., “Teasing in Hierarchical and Intimate Relations.”
The great satirist Rabelais described nicknames: F. Rabelais, Garantua and Pantagruel, trans. J. Cohen (Baltimore: Penguin/Everyman’s Library, 1955).
Monica Moore surreptitiously observed: M. M. Moore, “Nonverbal Courtship Patterns in Women: Context and Consequences,” Ethology and Sociobiology 6 (1985): 237–47.
partners with a richer vocabulary of teasing insults are happier: R. A. Bell, N. L. Buerkel-Rothfuss, and K. E. Gore, “‘Did You Bring the Yarmulke for the Cabbage Patch Kid?’ The Idiomatic Communication of Young Lovers,” Human Communication Research 14, no. 1 (1985): 47–67; L. A. Baxter, “An Investigation of Compliance-Gaining as Politeness,” Human Communication Research 10 (1984): 427–56; L. A. Baxter, “Forms and Functions of Intimate Play in Personal Relationships,” Human Communication Research 18 (1984): 336–63.
couples who had been together for several years tease each other: Keltner et al., “Teasing in Hierarchical and Intimate Relations.”
thanks to research by Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman: C. A. Anderson and B. J. Bushman, “Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature,” Psychological Science 12 (2001): 353–59.
It emerges early: V. Reddy, “Playing with Others’ Expectations: Teasing and Mucking About in the First Year,” in Natural Theories of Mind: Evolution, Development, and Simulation of Everyday Mindreading, ed. A. Whiten (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 143–58.
The teasing of children with obesity problems: J. K. Thompson, J. Cattarin, B. Fowler, and E. Fisher, “The Perception of Teasing Scale (POTS): A Revision and Extension of the Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale (PARTS),” Journal of Personality Assessment 65 (1995): 146–57; Thompson et al., “Development and Validation of the Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale,” Journal of Personality Assessment 56 (1991): 513–21.
The literature on bullies bears this out: D. Olweus, Aggression in Schools: Bullies and Whipping Boys (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1978); Olweus, Bullying at Schooclass="underline" What We Know and What We Can Do (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993).
elevated love, amusement, and mirth: Keltner et al., “Teasing in Hierarchical and Intimate Relations.”
consistent with the tendency for low power to trigger a threat system: D. Keltner, D. H. Gruenfeld, and C. Anderson, “Power, Approach, and Inhibition,” Psychological Review 110, no. 2 (2003): 265–84.
teasing in romantic bonds defined by power asymmetries: ibid.
they add irony and sarcasm to their social repertoire: E. Winner, The Point of Words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), Winner and S. Leekam, “Distinguishing Irony from Deception: Understanding the Speaker’s Second-Order Intention,” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 9 (1991): 257–70.
a precipitous twofold drop in the reported incidences of bullying: P. K. Smith and P. Brain, “Bullying in Schools: Lessons from Two Decades of Research,” Aggressive Behavior 26, no. 1 (2000): 1–9.
we created an opportunity for boys at two different developmental stages to taunt one another at a basketball camp: M. A. Logli et al., “Teasing, Taunting, and Gossip,” unpublished manuscript.
There are still many mysteries to Asperger’s Syndrome: Marian Sigman and Lisa M. Capps, Children with Autism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); U. Frith, F. Happe, and F. Siddons, “Autism and Theory of Mind in Everyday Life,” Social Development 3, no. 2 (1994): 108–24.
as revealed in the brilliant essay by music critic Tim Page: T. Page, “Parallel Play: A Lifetime of Restless Isolation Explained,” The New Yorker, August 20, 2007.
And teasing: E. A. Heerey et al., “Understanding Teasing: Lessons from Children with Autism,” Journal of Child Abnormal Psychology 33 (2005): 55–68.
TOUCH
For the past fifteen years: mind and life dialogues, www.mindandlife.org.
the Dalai Lama has been engaging: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “Understanding Our Fundamental Nature,” in Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists, ed. R. Davidson and A. Harrington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 66–80.
an answer is found in the contagious goodness hypothesis: I summarize these ideas in greater detail elsewhere. D. Keltner, “The Compassionate Instinct,” Greater Good 1 (2004): 6–9. The ideas I summarize as part of the viral goodness hypothesis found inspiration in several sources. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1971); R. L. Trivers, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1984): 35–57; Frank, Passions Within Reason; Sober and Wilson, Unto Others.
Desmond Morris’s famous phrasing: Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal (New York: Dell, 1967).
As Nina Jablonski has argued: Jablonski, Skin, 39–42.
several functions essential to human survivaclass="underline" For an outstanding summary of the function of the skin, see ibid.
we learned to signal different objects and states with what are known as emblems: For one of the first taxonomies of expressive behavior, including gestures, see Ekman and Friesen, “The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior: Categories, Origins, Usage and Coding,” Semiotica 1 (1969): 49–98.
The progenitor of this view: Rolls, The Brain and Emotion.
in one study participants received a fifteen-minute Swedish massage: R. A. Turner et al., “Preliminary Research on Plasma Oxytocin in Normal Cycling Women: Investigating Emotion and Interpersonal Distress,” Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 62 (1999): 97–113.
Other studies have found that massage: For a terrific summary of all facets of touch, see Tiffany Field, Touch (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).
Recent studies have found that rat mothers: D. Francis and M. J. Meaney, “Maternal Care and the Development of Stress Responses,” Development 9 (1999): 128–34.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in the pursuit of rewards: A. G. Phillips et al., “Neurobiological Correlates of Positive Emotional States: Dopamine, Anticipation, and Reward,” in International Review of Studies on Emotion, vol. 2, ed. K. T. Strongman (New York: John Wiley, 1992), 31–50.