Exposition
and Argumentation: Section HM
Erin Kelley
1 Nov 2016
Research Proposal Final Draft 1: The
Modern Relationship and Social Media
The topic of this paper is
essentially the ideas of “love”, or “an intense feeling of deep affection” and the
ways in which modern technology - specifically social media, or “websites and
applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in
social networking” - can affect the ways in which we give and receive it
through the “relationships” (primarily “serious intimate relationships” or
relationships involving physical or emotional intimacy which have been ongoing
for several years) which social media affects. This topic will cover the common
held beliefs about “love” and will describe it as something much simpler than the “butterflies in your
chest, warm feeling” that people often think of “love” as by looking at the
idea of “love” and the reasons why we form certain bonds with certain people from
a scientific standpoint, focusing primarily on biology and psychology. My paper
will also expand on social media and the ways in which it can impact our idea
of “love” and whom we give it to.
Essentially, my essay will probe the question, how has social media
redefined our understanding of love and relationships (again, primarily in
regards to “serious intimate relationships), with one another and the ways -
both positive and negative - in which it can affect existing relationships
between us? A secondary question which my paper may focus on is how does social
media affect the ways in which we sexually identify ourselves? That part may be
added later on depending on the amount of data I’m able to find regarding my
primary and that secondary topic
The biggest controversy here
is the idea of “love” in itself. “Love” is often romanticized and made
exclusive to one or two “special people” in your life, but looking at the idea
of “love” from a scientific standpoint, one which focuses specifically on the
psychological and biological processes that create this feeling, I will take a
side that refutes these common held beliefs regarding “love” and discuss how
the very thing we think we make exclusive to one or two people in our lives is
actually something which we display to almost everyone we regularly interact
with, including those we interact with through social media. This leads to the
hypothesis of how this very uncontrollable, unpredictable, yet very prevalent
emotion can not only allow us to form relationships with others which can
become intimate and last several years (hence, becoming “serious intimate
relationships”), but can also damage the relationships we already have
established and that social media can be a contributor to either of those ideas.
The way in which I will address
these ideas is first by understanding the biological processes that control the
emotion in question and psychological aspects regarding the emotion shown in
children, and the means through which they contribute to our making of
relationships. The essay, “Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything
We Feel, Think, Do, and Become” by Barbara Fredrickson discusses these
biological processes by examining three main contributors to this emotion -
oxytocin, your vaus nerve (both of which will be described later in the essay),
and the human brain. “Alone Together:
Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other” by Sherry Turkle
discusses the psychological effects of digital programs and machines designed
to act life-like on humans, specifically children, by analyzing the way in
which children interact with different toys and what they deem as “living” or
“nonliving”. This will be used to describe how a desire for affirmation can be
overwhelming to some who will look anywhere to find that sense of safety and
social media parallels this idea of finding affirmation in nonliving bots and
has implications for the future of relationships. I will additionally refer to
outside sources such as the Health
Hormone Network, Nature, statistics presented by the Pew Research Center regarding online dating and social media,
sources to be determined which contradict my own ideas for a sense of contrast
within the essay, as well as other sources yet to be determined, all of which
will ultimately support my own ideas.
Both
Barbara Fredrickson and Sherry Turkle discuss what causes the emotional aspects
of relationships, but from different viewpoints. Fredrickson analyzes the
biological aspects which create the feeling of “love”, contributing this
emotion to a combination of a chemical in our brain known as oxytocin, a
specific nerve known as the vagus nerve, and the brain itself.
Oxytocin,
is a chemical “produced by the hypothalamus and secreted by pituitary gland”
which plays an important role not only in childbirth, but also plays roles in
“human behaviors and social interaction” such as “recognition, sexual arousal,
trust, anxiety, and even stress levels” (What
Does Oxytocin Do?). While oxytocin plays a role in all of these things,
it’s not constantly at a high level in your body. Oxytocin fluctuates in
concentration within your body over time and thus affects your decision making
and behavior per situation. An experiment described by Fredrickson and
published by Nature utilized an
oxytocin nasal spray and a placebo nasal spray to affect how much money
investors would give to trustees with the chance of not getting any money in
return at all or of receiving back a higher amount than they gave. According to
this experiment, “trustees [those who received money from investors and had the
option to keep all of it or send some back] given oxytocin do not show more
trustworthy behaviour [than the placebo groups]” but, “oxytocin specifically affects the trusting
behaviour of investors [those who chose how much money to give to the
trustees]” (Oxytocin Increases Trust in
Humans). Additionally, the more trusting we are, the more oxytocin our
bodies produce - it’s a positive feedback loop of sorts. Oxytocin, however,
does not create a sort of “blind trust” within us, but rather largely controls
our “fight-or-flight” response and the capacity of our trust which we’re willing
to give. According to Fredrickson, “[oxytocin] heightens your attunement to
cues that signal whether others are sincere or not. Through eye contact and
close attention to all manner of smiles-and the embodied simulations such
visual intake triggers-your gut instincts about whom to trust and whom not to
trust become more reliable...oxytocin helps you pick up on cues that signal
another person’s goodwill and guides you to approach them with your own”
(Fredrickson 116). Oxytocin can essentially sharpen your ability to tell
whether someone is being genuine or not and help you evaluate how to act in
different situations as a result of those feelings it inspires. Oxytocin plays
a key role in determining whether or not we can trust someone, but it’s not the
only biological factor affecting our ability to build relationships with one
another.
The second biological factor
mentioned by Fredrickson which controls the “love” we have for one another is
the vagus nerve. The main functions of your vagus nerve, according to
Fredrickson, include helping you make better eye contact with the person with
whom you’re speaking, it allows you to time different facial expressions in
conjunction with the other person, and even shifts your ears slightly so you
can hear someone better. In essence, your vagus nerve controls how socially
flexible and adaptable you are through something called your vagal tone. Vagal
tone is a sign of how well your vagus nerve works, as determined “by tracking
your heart rate with your breathing rate” (Fredrickson 118). The higher your
vagal tone, the more adaptable you are in social situations, the more control
you have over your emotions, and it also results in a “higher loving potential”
(Fredrickson 119). Your vagal tone is important for successful social
interactions and building relationships with others, but your brain is also a
large contributor to this success.
An experiment described by
Fredrickson studied how brain activity between a speaker and listener can
resemble one another with a slight delay, and how the listener’s brain can even
make anticipatory decisions of which areas the speaker’s brain will be active
in the next coming second or two to successfully mirror and synchronize with
it. The synchronization of brain activity – between speaker and listener – is
known as “neural coupling” and the more synchronized the activity of your
brains, the more attuned to the other person you are. The abstract, published
by Harvard Business Review, describes
how a story told by a student within an fMRI machine (functional magnetic
resonance imaging machine used to make detailed images of your organs and
tissues) which tracked the storyteller’s brain activity was later played back
for listeners who also had their brain activity monitored. After hearing the
story, those who had more synchronized brain activity with the brain activity
of the speaker, were able to recall more details from the story than those who
had less synchronization. The more the listener’s brain activity synchronized
with the speaker’s, the more they “clicked”, and the more the listener enjoyed
the story. While Fredrickson primarily concerns herself with the biological
functions that create the unique feeling of love we’ve all experienced, Turkle
concerns herself primarily with the psychological effects love has on us.
Turkle begins her essay with a personal
anecdote of the mid 1970’s when she spent studying under, and later co-teaching
with a Joseph Weizenbaum. They worked with computer bots – or programs that
were designed to act life-like. The bot they primarily worked with, ELIZA, was
able to recognize strings of words and spit out a response based on those
words. “To ‘My mother is making me angry,’ the program might respond, ‘Tell me
more about your mother,’ or perhaps, ‘Why do you feel so negatively about your
mother?’” (Turkle 458). Being a computer program, ELIZA didn’t actually
understand relationships, emotions and titles such as “mother” or “angry”, but
it still managed to seem lifelike enough that students soon began to use ELIZA
as a method of venting, describing incidents that happened in their life that
are worrying them or that upset them. Despite ELIZA not being human, it’s
ability to analyze words and produce a response, which may seem genuine coming
from a real human being, students felt connected to it. Fredrickson would hold
that even though a bot can’t have brain activity, the results of its responses
resemble the aforementioned story-telling experiment that studied neural
coupling. By getting a sort of affirmation from something that seems just
life-like enough, the students’ brains were active in areas that would be
active had they been talking to another real person. Additionally, this sort of
affirmation and venting could increase levels of oxytocin within the students
to help them calm down and momentarily forget some of their troubles because as
mentioned before, the more trusting we are, the more oxytocin our bodies
produce and since oxytocin in part regulates our stress levels, venting to a
computer could have a positive impact on the emotional state of the students
venting at that very moment. In essence, the students were creating an
emotional bond with ELIZA – they were showing signs of love for a computer.
