For true fulfillment, seek satisfaction, not happiness

Why couldn’t Mick Jagger “get no satisfaction”?

“He just wasn’t trying hard enough,” says Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Emory University in Atlanta.

Berns should know. As a scientist and author of “Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment,” scheduled to arrive in bookstores this week, Berns has examined satisfaction from the inside out -- looking at the exquisite interplay between brain structure and experience -- and from the outside in. He has studied people who engage in an array of activities, including solving crossword puzzles, running ultra marathons and engaging in sadomasochistic sex. The explanation for why some people pursue these activities, and why they find them satisfying, can be found deep inside the brain.

“I used to think that we want pleasure and happiness, and now I don’t think that is the case at all,” says Berns. “Happiness and pleasure are passive emotions, and you don’t have to do much to achieve those feelings. I think of satisfaction in terms of a much more active component. Nature never said you had to be happy. It said you had to learn to adapt to the world.”

Satisfaction is one of a number of positive emotions such as joy, love and happiness to which psychologists and neuroscientists have only recently started paying attention.

Dubbed “positive psychology” by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman in 1998, the focus of this work contrasts sharply with the preoccupation with dysfunction and emotional pain that has dominated psychology and psychiatry for much of its history.

“People who study positive psychology really are interested in what makes life worth living,” says Shelly Gable, professor of psychology at UCLA.

Until recently, this research has been largely focused on behavior, on self-reports of emotional states and various other approaches to cognitive assessment. In the words of psychiatrists, the observation has been much more phenomenological than biological.

A small group of neuroscientists such as Berns has tried to discover what happens in people’s brains during such nuanced emotional experiences as happiness, satisfaction, motivation, even social conformity. It is relatively simple to frighten people who are undergoing a brain scan and see what parts of their brains light up; it’s quite another to contrive a study that will explore these subtle emotional states.

From his and others’ neuroscientific findings, Berns has concluded that satisfaction requires two important ingredients that nature has designed our brains to crave: novelty and challenge. But what points on our intricate cortical map, what neurotransmitters and hormones actually transform a novel and challenging experience into the gratifying state of satisfaction?

Berns has concluded that the answer lies in a generous portion of the neurotransmitter dopamine and a surprising dose of the so-called stress hormone cortisol, bathing a slab of brain structure called the striatum.

The functions of these structures can be found in any medical textbook on the brain. The striatum, a pair of arches located at the center of the skull, acts as a kind of air traffic control center in our brains, receiving loads of information from the frontal lobes. It also has the largest number of dopamine receptors of any region in the brain.

Dopamine neurons are concentrated near the pituitary gland and the brain stem, and are released when something unexpected or novel occurs. Because the highest density of receptors is in the striatum, the neurotransmitter is drawn to that region of the brain, which then decides what information it should pay attention to and what it should ignore.

Our brains are rich with dopamine during adolescence, a period of life known for its impulsive behavior and wild enthusiasm. As we grow older, though, dopamine requires a greater stimulus to get flowing. That is why, Berns thinks, we need to give it some inspiration through activities that are novel and challenging.

Dopamine and the striatum long have been associated with general feelings of happiness and well-being. But Berns is not simply looking at happiness; he is trying to tease out the specific biology of satisfaction, and for that he went one step further in examining the function of the stress hormone cortisol.

Cortisol is released when the body is exposed to a physically, mentally or psychologically stressful situation. And because stress has been linked to medical conditions including heart disease and depression, the conventional medical wisdom is that stress should be avoided.

Berns doesn’t agree with this view of the dangers of cortisol. He suggests that cortisol has a number of beneficial qualities -- for example, it can gear up the body to run or fight or do whatever it needs to deal with the stress. Cortisol levels rise with vigorous physical exercise and under the right circumstances can elevate mood, increase concentration and even improve memory.

“Novelty releases dopamine, and stress releases cortisol and these two chemicals interacting may hold the key to the way that challenging, even painful situations can provide a feeling of real satisfaction,” he says.

The problem, however, is novelty inevitably becomes routine, so the stakes keep getting raised for more novelty. This is a problem that psychologist Philip Brickman, who studied lottery winners in the late 1970s, described as a “hedonic treadmill.” He found that the levels of happiness in people who won the Illinois lottery were no different from those who didn’t. In fact, he found that lottery winners reported less pleasure in their daily activities than those with less money.

“Even as we contemplate our satisfaction with a given accomplishment,” Brickman wrote, “the satisfaction fades, to be replaced finally by a new indifference and a new level of striving.”

If we are geared to seek satisfaction through challenge and novelty, we must constantly seek higher levels of experience to maintain the same level of satisfaction. Certainly bungee jumping was exhilarating and satisfying, but not after the 10th time. Isn’t the premise of seeking these new experiences ultimately self defeating?

Not necessarily, says Berns, and perhaps that is the benefit of the way our dopamine system is structured. Because the dopamine neurons in our brains begin to decline after adolescence, we become more conservative in seeking out risky behavior as we age. Thus, it may take comparatively less stimulation, less novelty, to get the same levels of satisfaction as we grow older.

And, in fact, our greatest potential source of novelty and challenge may be snoring in bed next to us. The person we feel certain we know far too well to ever be surprised by, may turn out to be the greatest source of risk and adventure in our lives, Berns says. At its best, a healthy intimate relationship can offer someone the excitement, unpredictability and novelty that is essential for sustaining a deep sense of satisfaction.

Psychological research has born this out, says UCLA’s Gable. Studies of long-term couples consistently find that “people who are still in love and in a happy relationship, report doing novel things together,” she says.

“First you experience. Then you share,” Berns writes. “Even if we each have our personal versions of satisfaction -- a good meal, perhaps -- satisfaction is an experience best shared collectively and reciprocally with others.”