The Confidence Code (11 page)

The thinking is that this merged approach will bring answers faster and begin closing the gap between science and behavior. After countless uncomfortable hours of writing in our small home offices and at multiple Starbucks, of conducting frazzled interviews on trains, and reading research in cabs, we enviously examined plans for the institute by award-winning architect Renzo Piano, who specializes in buildings meant to inspire lightness and creativity. This one will give the appearance of floating above the ground and will have a vertical core of open space at the center of each floor designed to encourage interaction and brainstorming. Labs will be standing at the ready when ideas blossom.

The institute’s codirector, Tom Jessell, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, used to spend his days studying the mysteries of the microscopic. Now he thinks irrepressibly big. He sees around the corners of confidence in ways we haven’t even imagined.

For Jessell, understanding confidence from the cellular perspective, all the way out to its global implications, is the only proper scientific path of study. He told us to think about parts of the world where people lack a sense of individual power. He leapt up from his chair, his excitement uncontainable. “What you see may be, in part, the consequence of not having confidence. You live in a world where everything you do is bad and nothing you do makes a difference. It’s what’s called ‘learned helplessness.’ There are social scientists in Africa studying that.” Of course poverty, climate, and bad governments play a crucial role, he said. “But if, through multidisciplinary study, you can come to understand what you can do to change that state of confidence in an individual, how you can move from a state of apathy to one of optimism, the global implications would be amazing.”

Scientists at Columbia and at other leading universities are at the forefront of bringing the macro and the micro together through a revolutionary field called
epigenetics
, which examines how life experiences can become imprinted on our DNA and can change the
epigene
, or the outside of our genes, and cause the genes to behave in different ways.

Certain traits are pretty fixed and hard to influence—qualities such as height or eye color, for example. But character traits, like confidence, are much more complex and malleable. Identical twins offer the best example of the power of epigenetics. True, their DNA is the same, yet they often show differences in health and personality. Why? It’s due to the
expression
of those genes, the way some are switched on while others are switched off. Those on and off switches are heavily influenced by the external environment.

Even more profoundly, those external changes may be passed on to our children immediately. Genetic change may be possible in a single lifetime, instead of over multiple generations, as Darwin proposed.

“The whole idea of whether our lifespan experience can become heritable is an incredibly hot topic in epigenetics right now,” said Frances Champagne, a psychologist at Columbia who specializes in the field. She and her researchers are exploring the ways in which prenatal events can induce long-term effects. Her findings suggest there are various ways that stressful episodes, for example, can have an epigenetic effect not only on pregnant women but also on their developing fetuses. She’s also looking at the impact of stress on men and their future offspring. Other studies have found that women who witnessed the 9/11 attacks while they were pregnant passed on significant levels of stress hormones to their babies, through their DNA. A different study found that pregnant mice that got fewer vitamins had babies more likely to be obese. It’s entirely too early, Champagne told us, to predict whether a woman who builds her confidence, for example, might at the same time be creating something heritable for her children, but it’s not out of the question.

Strength Through Sensitivity

Steve Suomi has been in a unique position to study some of the new trends in the nature/nurture puzzle. Suomi can play Svengali with his monkey colony in a way in which no psychologist researching humans would be able to. He has taken monkeys that are anxious or confident, based on their genetics, and then carefully manipulated their environments to see what happens. The results are startling. “Some traits are inherited,” he said, with a slow smile, “but that doesn’t mean they can’t be altered.”

Suomi has found that, just as with humans, rhesus monkey mothers are extremely important in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of their offspring; the first six months of bonding and nurturing are critical. Just how critical? “We did studies looking at monkeys whose genetic background suggested that they would be naturally anxious and fearful, and we cross-fostered them with mothers who were supportive and there for their kids,” he told us. “And those kids did beautifully when they grew up. They grew highly social. They got used to looking to others for help, and they ended up at the top of their dominant cycle.”

So here’s how it breaks down: Monkeys that were born with the more resilient genes essentially did fine with any type of mother. The monkeys that have the social anxiety gene, raised by anxious or neglectful mothers, grew into anxious adult monkeys. A decent mother produces a somewhat anxious adult, but a great mother can turn a baby genetically programmed to be at risk for anxiety into a healthy adult. With her nurturing, her child can overcome the genetic blueprint.

Suomi then made a radical, counterintuitive discovery with far greater implications. Those so-called “genetically challenged” monkeys, when raised by those great mothers, don’t just turn out fine, they actually excel. They thrive. They become stronger, healthier, and more confident than their peers. They become superstars, if they have superstar moms.

Suomi had uncovered what a few other researchers are starting to understand. Some genes make monkeys, and humans, not more
vulnerable
to the environment, but more
sensitive
to the environment. There’s a big difference. Suomi has come to see the monkeys with the anxious gene as sponges, absorbing the worst, but also the best, of what they experience.

In scientific circles, the proposition of sensitivity genes is quickly gaining ground and was recently dubbed the orchid theory. Most children, according to developmental psychologist Bruce Ellis and developmental pediatrician W. Thomas Boyce, are genetically like dandelions: hardy and able to thrive in many environments. They go on to suggest that despite what we have thought for years, the nondandelion children may in fact not be the weak ones. Based on burgeoning evidence, the researchers posit that these children should be viewed as orchids: trickier to raise, but if nurtured in the right environment, able to excel beyond even their sturdier dandelion counterparts.

Other studies confirm that for people with sensitivity genes, the environment leaves a much larger imprint. Thousands of German toddlers, whose routine screaming, whining, and unfocused behavior was so severe that they were considered at risk, were followed recently for almost two years. Researchers videotaped parental interventions, and then guided the parents as to how to better interact with and read with their children. At the end of the study, the researchers noted significant behavioral improvement in all of the children. The most encouraging surprise? The biggest improvements came for the children with a version of the dopamine gene that has been linked to ADHD, but may actually be another sensitivity gene. For them, the positive parental interventions produced twofold improvements over the children with the normal gene who received the same kind of interventions.

Scientists at the University of Essex tested this theory on adults, using a computer game with a variety of images, and discovered that people who have the short forms of the serotonin gene are more easily influenced by both negative and positive information. They are more sensitive, and, some scientists believe, more able to adapt.

Think of it this way, in terms of the real world. The people born with this gene might be among the least confident you know, or among the most confident, depending on the challenges they’ve faced and the support they’ve had growing up.

“And of course,” noted Suomi, with a shrug, “it’s a roll of the dice as to which environment you find yourself in.” He believes that there are other critical periods, beyond childhood, when those with sensitivity genes might be especially influential. He’s started to study the relationship between the serotonin gene and puberty, childbirth, and menopause.

The orchid gene hypothesis, by the way, fueled our nerves, waiting for our genetic results. Were we dandelions or orchids? Katty guessed she was of sturdy stock, able to adapt and cope in many environments. “But you’re so flexible,” said Claire, who was now thoroughly confused about what her own results would show. Did her ubernurturing mother play a big role? Or was her resilience in her DNA? She started to obsess about her kids. “Who needs extra attention? Should I test them? And if I have an orchid, would that child suck up all my mental energy, leaving me little left for the other?”

The Promise of Plastic

The most astonishing science, with profound promise for cracking the confidence code, proves that all of us can rewire our brains, even as adults. Orchid or dandelion, good mother or bad—when we change our thinking and develop new mental habits, that effort creates physical changes in our brains.

The question of resilience, of why some people are better at withstanding setbacks than others, why they remain confident in the face of disasters, has preoccupied Rebecca Elliott for years. A leading researcher in cognitive brain imaging at the University of Manchester, she looks for clues in those images about resilience. Resilience may be partly genetic, perhaps a result of that serotonin gene. But Elliott believes research will soon bear out that resilience, a quality related to confidence, can also be created, and she pointed us to the expanding research on brain plasticity. Fairly simple brain training, she explained to us, or methods of thinking, can carve new pathways in our adult brains, pathways that encourage resilience, or confident thinking, and that then become part of our hard-wiring.

It may have been when we started to understand that there is just so much new data on brain plasticity that we could never get through it all, or it might have been when we finished yet another riveting decoding session with Laura-Ann Petitto, a groundbreaking cognitive neuroscientist at Gallaudet University—it’s hard to pinpoint the moment, exactly. But fully understanding the promise of brain plasticity was a watershed for us. It’s fair to say it changed our outlook on the project. There had been times, as we examined the causes of the confidence gap, when we were weighed down by the thought that it might take another few generations to overcome. Indeed, for that reason, we weren’t planning on this as an advice or how-to book. We just didn’t think we’d find a lot that was truly relevant, beyond the superficial dictate to sit up straight. We’d also been disturbed to learn that a good bit of our self-assurance is genetic and were starting to wonder how much of a choice some of us have in the matter. We had no idea something as straightforward as targeted mental exercises could create lasting behavioral changes.

Plasticity is the cornerstone of the idea that confidence is a choice we can all make. If we can permanently alter our brain makeup, then even those people born with less genetic confidence can develop permanent, solid confidence with the right training. Norman Vincent Peale was far ahead of his time. There’s power
and
science in positive thinking.

(The more we read about plasticity, the more it calmed our anxiety about having commissioned those genetic tests. At least, we figured, we could overcome whatever unsavory results turned up.)

Like most parents, we’d been familiar with the concept of brain plasticity in relation to our children’s brains—the idea that we needed to shove in a bunch of good stuff before they turn ten and their brains supposedly turn rigid and brittle. Actually, the window is open much longer than that. Our brains remain plastic throughout adulthood.

Elliott told us that cognitive behavioral therapy, a technique developed to help individuals create new thought patterns, is the most effective approach to making specific behavioral changes, but some of the most dramatic examples of a change in the brain’s function and structure have involved basic meditation. A number of studies, conducted with MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) before and after a period of meditation, showed less activity in the amygdala, the fear center, after an average of eight weeks of meditation. A recent experiment, done with highly stressed business people, found not just less fear activity after meditation, but also that the amygdala itself actually shrank and remained smaller. Conversely, those same postmeditation MRIs show more activity in the prefrontal cortex, the center of calm reason.

We had both tried meditation and knew that it made us feel calm. Now, understanding that it could physically change our brains made us resolved to make the practice a regular habit.

Beyond meditation, clinicians are having surprising success treating post-traumatic stress disorder victims with cognitive therapy. PTSD typically shifts action in the brain to the amygdala. And cognitive behavioral therapy moves it back to the frontal cortex. Researchers at Northwestern University documented remarkable changes in the brain’s physical makeup after a short session of behavioral therapy aimed at patients battling a fear of spiders. They studied twelve adults with arachnophobia. Before therapy, the brain scans showed the regions involved in fear, especially the amygdala, had much stronger responses to spider photos. They then had a single two-hour session of behavioral therapy. In this case, the therapy involved approaching and then touching a live tarantula. (Talk about facing your fears. It’s like asking someone with a fear of public speaking to practice with a podium and an audience.) When they repeated the brain scans at the end of the treatment, the amygdala’s action was back to normal. But the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for reappraisal and for looking at things more rationally, was
more
active. And here’s what’s most impressive—when the subjects’ brains were scanned again six months later, the amygdala was still quiet.
After just a two-hour session.
Six months later, they were still able to calmly touch that tarantula.