Nurture, Nature, and Caring: We Are Not Prisoners of Our Genes

By Riane Eisler and Daniel S. Levine for Brain and Mind 3: 9–52, 2002.
© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Abstract

This article develops a theory for how caring behavior fits into the makeup of humans and other mammals. Biochemical evidence for three major patterns of response to stressful or otherwise complex situations is reviewed. There is the classic fight-or-flight response; the dissociative response, involving emotional withdrawal and disengagement; and the bonding response, a variant of which Taylor et al. (2000) called tend-and-befriend. All three of these responses can be explained as adaptations that have been selected for in evolution and are shared between humans and other mammals. Yet each of us contains varying tendencies toward all of these responses.

How does development interact with genes to influence these tendencies?

How do individuals, societies, and institutions make choices between these types of responses?

We review the evidence, based on behavioral, lesion, single-cell, and brain imaging studies, for cortical-subcortical interactions involved in all three of these response types, and propose partial neural network models for some of these interactions. We propose that the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex mediates this choice process. This area of prefrontal cortex performs this mediation through its connections with areas of sensory and association cortex that represent social contexts or stimuli, and with areas of the hypothalamus, limbic system, and autonomic nervous system that represent emotional states or classes of response patterns.

The article concludes with implications of our theory for social interactions and institutions. We argue that despite the wide prevalence of fight-or-flight responses, the bonding, caring responses remain available. We show with historical and contemporary examples how social settings – whether in education, work places, families, politics, and informal social customs – can be designed to support and enhance the natural caring responses of the brain.