The Molecule of More

out of the reef. We then figured out a way to control the rudder with our feet, 
and we got the boat pointed in the direction of the shore. As soon as I began 
to plan and act, the panic receded, and I could think rationally.
After we made it to shore, while I was walking back to my room, I 
began to weep and shake uncontrollably.
This real-life story is an excellent example of the interplay between 
dopamine and the H&N chemical of fight or flight, norepinephrine. 
When the steering mechanism broke, norepinephrine kicked in. The 
H&N emotion of fear overwhelmed the sailor. He just wanted to get 
out of the situation. At first, the initial neurochemical H&N flood dis-
placed his dopaminergic ability to plan. Nevertheless, the fact that he 
could sense that panic was on the way, but was able to hold it off, is an 
indication that his dopamine system had not shut down completely.
After only a few seconds, control dopamine was fully activated, and 
he began to make rational plans. H&N norepinephrine was shut down 
and the fear receded, leaving a passionless, cerebral approach to sur-
vival. After the crisis was over and he was safely on shore, dopamine 
receded, leaving room for H&N to come roaring back, triggering the 
shaking and weeping.

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93
DOMINATION
Conventional wisdom would attribute his survival at sea to “run-
ning on adrenaline.” In fact, the opposite was true. He wasn’t run-
ning on adrenaline; he was running on dopamine. During the intense 
moments when he saved the boat, dopamine was in control and adren-
aline (called norepinephrine when it is inside the brain) was suppressed.
In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson summarized the situa-
tion like this: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it 
concentrates his mind wonderfully.” A more recent doctor, Dr. David 
Caldicott, an emergency room physician at Calvary Hospital in Can-
berra, Australia, expressed it this way: “Emergency medicine is like 
flying a plane. Hours of mundanity punctuated by moments of sheer 
terror. If you’re worth your salt, you’re not scared, though. Just focused.”
IT’S EASIER TO KILL FROM A DISTANCE
In the science fiction classic Dune, by Frank Herbert, the hero has to 
prove he is human by suppressing his animal instinct to act in the here 
and now. His hand is placed in a diabolical contraption, a black box 
that creates unimaginable pain. If he pulls his hand out of the box, the 
old woman administering the test will pierce his neck with a poison nee-
dle, and he will die. She tells him, “You’ve heard of animals chewing off 
a leg to escape a trap? That’s an animal kind of trick. A human would 
remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill 
the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”
Some people are naturally better at suppressing emotion than oth-
ers. In fact, they’re born that way, in part because of the number and 
nature of their dopamine receptors, molecules in the brain that react 
when dopamine is released. They differ based on genetics. Researchers 
measured the density of dopamine receptors (how many there are, and 
how closely they crowd together) in the brains of a variety of people, 
and compared the results to tests that measured the person’s “emo-
tional detachment.”
The detachment test measured traits such as the tendency to avoid 
sharing personal information and to become involved with other people. 

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94
THE MOLECULE OF MORE
The scientists found a direct relationship between receptor density and 
personal engagement. High density was associated with a high level of
emotional detachment. In a separate study, people who had the highest 
detachment scores described themselves as “cold, socially aloof, and vin-
dictive in their relationships.” By contrast, those with the lowest detach-
ment scores described themselves as “overly nurturing and exploitable.”
Most people have personalities that fall somewhere between the 
highest and lowest scores on the detachment scale. We’re neither aloof
nor overly nurturing. How we react depends on the circumstances. 
If we’re engaged with the peripersonal—up close, in direct contact, 
focused on the present moment—H&N circuits are activated, and the 
warm, emotional aspects of our personality come out. When we’re 
engaged in the extrapersonal—at a distance, thinking abstractly, 
focused on the future—the rational, emotionless parts of our personal-
ity are more likely to be seen. These two different ways of thinking are 
illustrated by the ethics dilemma called “the trolley problem”: