Barbara Fredrickson Alone Together Chapter 1 Summary

In the book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, Barbara Fredrickson discusses the biological aspects of love and the connections that people can have through interactions with each other. Fredrickson aims to increase the reader’s knowledge of how love works and she even tries to change the way people view love. She wants people to take a more static and scientific approach to connections between people rather than the emotional mystery that people view it as now. Sherry Turkle on the other hand wrote the book titled Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other where she tries to uncover how human interactions and connections work by observing human responses

to companion like robots. The purpose of her research is to get a better understanding of the human psyche, and of human interactions and attachments in general. Humans are a complicated species and different people have different thoughts as to what special aspects of humans give them their distinctiveness. I argue that the interactions between individuals and the formations of societies are integral parts of human consciousness making it unique and giving people their defining characteristics.
Humanity is a difficult concept to describe. The complexities of the mind are just that, complex. They are so complex that the entire field of psychology is solely devoted towards using a scientific approach to understand the human psyche. It is a concept so intuitive that we do not even have to think about how our minds work to enjoy our daily lives; yet it is so complicated that when we do study how it works, the results are often unexpected or illogical. The way Turkle describes the intellect of a Furby can illustrate how complicated the inner workings of the mind can be; she says, “Even those who do not think a Furby has a mind — and this, on a conscious level includes most people — find themselves in a new place with an upside-down Furby that is whining and telling them it is scared. They feel themselves, often despite themselves, in a situation that calls for an ethical response” (Turkle 475). Rationally, the cries and wails of a toy should not institute any response in a human, but according to Turkle’s research people were still affected. Interactions even between humans and inanimate objects arouse peculiar responses, however interactions between just inanimate objects would be fruitless because there is no living being which could be affected. Therefore a source of humanity’s uniqueness derives from the fact that they can be emotionally moved not only through interactions with other people, but also through interactions with robots.
As far as the topic of society is concerned, humans tend to form groups to make tasks easier. For example, if a person had to go out, hunt for food themselves, collect water themselves, and create a shelter by themselves, the work could all become very taxing for a single individual. However, if a small group of people worked together to complete all the tasks, not only would they get done faster, but the tasks could get completed more effectively than if one individual were to complete them all. Expanding this idea to an entire society of people, individuals can all specialize in certain areas to produce the best possible results. They could also compete against each other leading to mutual growth and improvement. This personal growth only adds to the individuality of each person, and the overall lives of people become much easier and much more efficient for everyone in the society.
Many animal species form communities and societies for the purpose of dividing tasks. They could use strength in numbers to overcome their obstacles, whether the obstacle is gathering food, gathering water, creating shelter, or even defending against predators. Interestingly enough, humans are said to have evolved from a common ancestor of apes; yet ape children develop at a faster rate than human children, suggesting that humans need the love and companionship of their parents more than other animals. Clearly, there must be some important reason why humanity relies on long development periods where they must be nurtured by others.
Society and companionship themselves are an integral part of human nature. Humans rely on and depend on others. For example, a baby depends on its parents for several years before it is fit enough to go out into the world and survive by itself. However, even when a child does not necessarily need its parents, in human society the child still stays with the parents and usually relies on them for taking care of its basic necessities. Fredrickson says, “When an infant and parent do click, their coordinated motions and emotions show lots of mutual positive engagement. Picture moms or dads showering their baby with kisses, tickling their [baby] … These parents are superattentive” (Fredrickson 116). There is a bond that develops between the parents and the child which causes them to stay together even after the child has developed and can survive on its own. Other living creatures tend to “leave the nest” as they grow mature enough to survive on their own; however, humans go against this idea, further contributing to their unique consciousness.
Interactions with other humans are an essential part of human consciousness. Most people would probably not be able to survive a few hours with literally nothing to do, and no mental activity. If they were locked in a small room with nothing in it, they would end up developing some type of mental activity to keep their brain stimulated. This reason explains why many people who do not interact much with other individuals interact more often with technology as some fake type of social stimuli. Turkle’s research suggests that even though people interact with machines, the stimulation is still similar enough to the real thing to be sufficient. Specifically, she says, “When active and interactive computer toys were first introduced in the late 1970s, children recognized that they were neither dolls nor people nor animals. Nor did they seem like machines … Computers were intelligent machines; in contrast, people were emotional machines” (Turkle 463). Humans need some version of interaction with something that can pass off as a human to maintain their sanity and mental health. This need for stimulation through interactions is another intrinsic part of the human mind.
The survival aspects of communicating with other humans is an interesting topic to consider.

“Why would humans communicate with each other in the first place?” is a good question to consider when exploring this topic. The biggest and most significant benefit of communication is the fact that communication is the primary medium of transferring knowledge and information between people, leading to advancement throughout all of humanity. Through a basic survival lens, people could talk to others to tell them where there might be a potential food source or a potential water source. People would also communicate and warn each other about predators. Then, as language evolves and times change, people would communicate less about biological needs and more about ideas. Through the sharing of ideas, multiple people could work together to bring such ideas into fruition, which is still relevant today where people share an idea they have hoping to inspire others to share their vision and work with them to accomplish their goal. Communication at this point in human history would also be used as a method of connecting with other people. “Brain coupling … is the means by which we understand each other … Evidence for synchrony in two people’s insulae suggests that in good communication, two individuals come to feel a single, shared emotion as well, one that is distributed across their two brains” (Fredrickson 112). The connections formed between people are an integral part of what makes us human, and we owe part of our own individuality to the interactions we have with other people. The world as we know it today would not be possible without communication and sharing information between other people. Through communication, people can band together, form societies, and rely on these societies to make their lives easier; and in doing so, society becomes a deep-seated part of human life and

consciousness.
Clearly, humans are a distinct species. Even though humans are constantly using their minds, they barely understand how it works. Human interactions within the scope of society, and even just human interactions in general, are a critical piece of human consciousness. Humans are different from other animals in different ways such as in their behavior towards robots, their unusual maturation patterns where they stay with their parents for longer than needed, and through their formations of societies as a means to make tasks easier and to provide an easy network to connect with others. By understanding what makes human consciousness unique, people can attain a more cultivated perspective of the world around them.