The Confidence Code (10 page)

We discovered that there are a handful of neurotransmitters critical to creating that state of being, working as positive messengers in our brains. Serotonin, the same substance that Suomi is tracking in his monkeys, is one of them.

Healthy levels of serotonin in the prefrontal cortex enable us to make more rational decisions, because serotonin helps us remain calm. Our prefrontal cortex is the command center of our brain—it’s the home of executive function, rational thought, and decision making. Think of it as our brain’s Yoda. When that part of our brain is awash in serotonin, it encourages confidence in our decision making because we feel much less stress.

That’s because serotonin also helps to quiet our amygdala, the primitive part of our brain. It is our primal core, necessary for moments when we need to access strong emotions quickly.

Most of those emotions have a negative association, such as the fight-or-flight response, primal instincts that humans needed for survival on the ancient savanna. In the modern-day era, when survival is a less pressing daily concern (even if it doesn’t always seem like it), activity in the amygdala highlights psychological threats, and it contributes to depression and anxiety as well. It’s the role of serotonin to calm the amygdala and create what neuroscientists call “healthy communication” between the rational and the fear-based parts of our brain.

Oxytocin is another neurotransmitter that directly affects confidence. That surprised us initially. You may have read news reports about what’s been dubbed the “cuddle hormone.” Scientists say oxytocin affects our desire to hug, to have sex with our partners, to be generous to friends, to share, to make moral decisions, and to be faithful. It’s what women are bathed in when they give birth and breastfeed. Men and women get it through lovemaking and exercise. It’s a virtuous circle of a hormone: The more you hug, the more oxytocin is produced, and so you want to hug more. A provocative study, which we also detail in the notes, recently uncovered that it even encourages monogamy.

Shelley Taylor, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies oxytocin and has found it to be heavily tied to optimism, suggests that it’s also a crucial part of confidence. She believes that by encouraging more social interaction, and fewer negative thoughts about others and the world, oxytocin paves the way for people to act and to take risks. When you’re optimistic, doing things just seems easier. Oxytocin works in the brain much like serotonin does—helping activity in the prefrontal cortex, the center of higher-order thinking skills and executive function, and keeping the easily alarmed amygdala quiet.

Taylor has even pinpointed the OXTR gene, which controls the delivery of oxytocin. As is the case with the serotonin gene, she has identified two versions of the gene. One can lead to weak social skills, more reaction to stress, low optimism, low self-esteem, and less ability to master things, while the other version correlates with more resilient, relaxed, and outgoing behavior. So, even though we can generate new supplies of oxytocin by having babies and by hugging more, some of us are simply born with more of it, and thus may start out with a higher baseline of confidence-enhancing attitudes and behaviors.

And we mustn’t forget dopamine.

Dopamine inspires doing and exploring; it is associated with curiosity and risk taking. An absence of dopamine has been linked to passivity, boredom, and depression. Two relevant genes control dopamine: one is known as COMT, and the other is DRD4. Both of these genes come in different varieties. (Are you starting to sense a theme here?)

One version of the DRD4 gene, DRD47R, is the gene that encourages dramatic risk-taking. It’s often called the “adventure gene.” Think skydivers, or all of those scandal-prone politicians. Extreme athletes often have it, and those investors who seem to thrive on risk. Their bodies crave the bigger dopamine boosts they get when pushing limits.

The COMT gene is often called the “warrior/worrier” gene. It’s complicated, but essential to confidence. We were lured into figuring out how it works by trying to guess whether we ourselves are programmed to worry or fight.

One variant of the COMT gene clears dopamine rapidly from our frontal cortex (warrior), one at middling speed (warrior/worrier mix), and one slowly (worrier). Usually, dopamine is a good thing. Having more there for as long as possible is better for concentration. ADHD drugs are all about dopamine. So it makes sense that the worrier gene variation leaving dopamine in our brains longer, leads to higher IQs. Again—less dopamine means those warriors typically have more difficulty trying to concentrate. Here’s the COMT conundrum, though. When stress kicks in, our bodies make dopamine fast. It floods our cortex. And
too much
dopamine does not make for better concentration or risk-taking ability; it overwhelms our brains, causing a sort of stress shutdown. Suddenly, the tables are turned. The genetic variation that removes the dopamine the most slowly, in that moment, the worrier variation, is not a good thing, because it contributes to that shutdown.

So, under stressful situations, the genetic benefits and deficits are reversed. This explains why the extremely focused and responsible worker bees can turn around and choke on tough exams or in other high-risk situations. And why more generally low-key personalities suddenly rise to a specific challenge. In fact, they thrive. They actually need some stress to do their best. Think of the star athletes who impress mainly in the heat of the game. Or, closer to home, of journalists who work well only under intense deadline pressure.

We immediately saw a connection to confidence in the way this variant of the COMT gene might encourage paradoxical behavior. There’s actually science behind why self-assurance can appear to be situation-specific. You know, lawyers who are brilliant at preparing briefs, but can’t fathom arguing in court. Or the marketing executives who can’t get motivated to do the routine tasks their jobs require, but then spring into action just before the monthly presentation, pull all-nighters and come up with winning concepts. To some extent, those people are simply built that way.

We were starting to see how all of these hormones lay the groundwork we need in order to experience confidence. When dopamine, which gets us moving, is commingled with serotonin, which induces calm thought, and oxytocin, which generates warm and positive attitudes toward others, confidence can much more easily take hold.

It was at about this point in our research that we both became insatiably curious about our own genetics and started to speculate, pretty unscientifically, about our DNA. We’ve tried for years to untangle our own operational paradoxes. Why is it that we rebel against deadlines, for example, but need them to produce our best work? And yet we’re also both fairly cautious about being prepared, and inclined to fall into perfectionism. So are we warriors or worriers? Do we have trouble concentrating except under extreme pressure? And how can we have achieved what we have in our careers, and be writing a book about confidence, and still feel anxiety in an interview? Are we short on serotonin? And what would we do with that information if we had it?

Claire figured she is high in oxytocin, and Katty agreed with that self-assessment. “I crave affection, contact, and intimacy, and tend, to a fault, to view the world around me with the rosiest of lenses. It can cloud my judgment sometimes,” Claire admitted. “But I’m guessing I’m low in serotonin, because I can be quite anxious. I’ve struggled with it over the years, and my parents both suffered from depression. I think my overall makeup would not add up to a highly confident genetic profile. I’ve probably created whatever confidence I have.”

We were both certain that Katty is a warrior. From Claire’s point of view especially, Katty thrives on risk and challenge. “I figure I’m also pretty high in serotonin—I’m not overly anxious,” says Katty, “but I don’t think I have the warm and fuzzy oxytocin gene. I’m fairly matter-of-fact.”

We went back and forth in this vein for a few weeks, debating a move that neither of us had anticipated when we started researching this subject—whether we should seek out a genetic mapping for ourselves. We hadn’t expected to uncover much research to suggest that confidence could be inherited, or biologically based, but now we were hooked on the idea that we might be naturally, genetically, inclined to jump off a cliff or to stand up in a really intimidating meeting. Would it help us to know? Or would it inhibit us further? Ultimately, curiosity won out and we decided to do the tests, especially when we found out that it’s as simple as sending off saliva samples to one of two genetic start-up companies, one called 23andMe, the other, Genomind.

23andMe (named for the number of chromosome pairs in each human cell) is the Google-backed personal genetics company that suddenly started generating headlines over a showdown with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration just as we were finishing the book. In late 2013 the agency warned 23andMe that it could not market its genetic tests without regulatory approval, and the company has stopped selling them for now, as it attempts to negotiate a blessing from the FDA. The ongoing debate promises to help define the new era of personal genetics and personalized medicine, and most especially who controls access to DNA sequencing and information.

23andMe had been offering something unique—broad genetic testing, directly accessible to the public, without going through doctors. It had become fairly affordable—they were selling their personal genetics test for just ninety-nine dollars. The company has declared its long-term goal is to become a leading genetic database for scientific research. Its testing wasn’t comprehensive—a million out of our three billion genes. But 23andMe scientists were focusing on genes where they believe research has identified health concerns—genes that affect Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and breast cancer, for example, and quite a few others. They were also offering a lot of specific information about ancestry. The results included substantial detail about what your genetic profile says about a broad array of other potential health risks. And that, essentially, is what troubles the FDA, which contends that there is conclusive science for only a very few genes right now, and that consumers might, therefore, put too much or too little weight on their results and make questionable health decisions, without the help of their physicians.

Genomind’s testing is more narrowly focused, but it’s revolutionary in the field of brain wellness and neuropsychiatry. The founders want to put cutting-edge genetic science in the hands of doctors and psychiatrists for concrete treatment. (The company has avoided issues with the FDA by offering testing only through physicians and hospitals.) Genomind scientists have created a very specific panel of genetic tests, backed up by analysis of results, which healthcare providers around the country are already using. Instead of a doctor listening to a patient describe symptoms, and then using a trial-and-error approach to medication, the genetic results often suggest which medications might be most effective. You may be a candidate for antianxiety medication, for example, but if you have a certain genetic profile, some drugs won’t work well for you. Your doctor can choose, based on the science, to start with something else.

Both 23andMe and Genomind offered some, but not all, of the testing we were looking for, and 23andMe was still in full operation then, so we doubled down. We understood, by that point in our research, that genetics aren’t determinative. But still it felt like an important decision.

The test taking was almost too easy (we each spat in a test tube), but anticipating the results was agonizing—a bit like waiting for your SAT scores to come through. As reporters, we always figure that any information is good information. Knowing our raw material had to be an asset. That’s the very point of this chapter. But, what if? What if we didn’t like what we learned? What if the results reinforced all our negative self-stereotypes? No ruminating, we told ourselves. We’d just have to wait.

What Happens When Life Happens

If a large chunk of confidence can be explained away by genetics, we wondered what that meant for our theory that confidence might also be a choice. It turns out both are possible. We discovered that for a lot of the scientific world, the long-standing nature
versus
nurture formulation is old news.

The pioneering thinking and research has moved on to examine the frisson that happens when nature and nurture interact. It’s the effect of nurture on nature that really matters and makes us who we are. In many cases, nurture is so powerful that it can alter nature’s original programming, turning genes on and off, as it were. Some scientists are uncovering “sensitivity genes”: genetic variations that may mean those who carry them are more susceptible to environmental influence than others. Still other researchers have found that the power of habitual thinking creates physical changes and new neural pathways in our brains, which can reinforce and even override genetics and change brain chemistry, as well. So, life choices do matter, as much as, if not more than, what we’re born with.

Think about it like this. You have a blueprint for your new house, and the foundation has been poured. Some structures will be easier to build on top of that foundation than others. If you’re lucky, you already have the underlying support for a third story. But, even if your foundation isn’t as strong, and you have to pour a bit more cement, you can still add that additional floor later on. It might take extra work. And you might have to use different materials. Much will also depend on outside factors. How much will storms batter the house? Are you in an earthquake region? Or are you blessed with mild weather? Those weather and geological conditions will force the foundation to move and react in different ways than it otherwise would. However, your time and effort matter as well.

Confirmation that this is the new-new direction in science came when we saw a very real structure, a half-billion-dollars’ worth, going up double time on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Our journey brought us to the front of what will be the home of Columbia University’s Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Its goal is to create a holistic approach to the study of the brain, its functioning, and its impact on everything from human behavior to health to emotion. Scientists and psychologists but also historians, artists, and philosophers—top scholars from every field—are converging on this Columbia outpost in West Harlem.