Barbara Fredrickson Selections From Love Summary

The Way You Write is More Important than the Argument Itself

What is more important when trying to convince someone of your point: eloquence or knowledge? Some may argue that both are essential for a good paper or speech, but in the end, what matters most? The most intelligent person on Earth may be able to recall any fact, but if they are not well-written or well-spoken they cannot capture the attention of the everyday person. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, the author of Selections from Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, is knowledgeable about her field of study, the positivity of love on the body, yet she is unable to properly get her point across to the reader. Throughout her writing

she addresses the three “biological characters” that support her argument: the brain, oxytocin, and the vagus nerve. She begins by describing how the brain undergoes “neural coupling”, which is the ability for two brains to sync when engaged in a social interaction. Then, she details the effects of oxytocin on the ability of people to trust and empathize with others. Her last argument is about the vagus nerve and how love can make you build vagal tone, thus making you healthier. These three factors play an important role in Fredrickson’s belief that love is more scientific than we are lead to believe from the media and society. Although Fredrickson makes valid points throughout her work , the presentation of her reasoning, issues with the scientific experiments, and her contradictory statements take away from her argument rather than bolster it.
When writing, an author must consider the audience they are addressing. Throughout her work, Fredrickson writes in a way that looks down on her audience’s beliefs, thus distancing readers from her argument. One of the first things Fredrickson tells the reader is to forget everything they may think love is, claiming that her scientific thinking is the correct way to perceive love. She states, “It’s time to upgrade your view of love,” and by using the word “upgrade”, she puts her views on a pedestal above anyone else’s (Fredrickson 108). Further, she writes her paper to educate people who are not scientists. Her target audience are those who “have so many preexisting and strong beliefs about [love],” yet she does nothing to dispel these supposedly incorrect beliefs (Fredrickson 108). Instead, she simply tells the readers to “[forget] about” and “[set] aside” what they have been taught their whole lives without fully explaining why. She understands that her audience does not want to let go of their own views, yet she continues to use mocking language such as, “your so-called loved ones” (Fredrickson 108). Barbara Fredrickson’s complete disregard for other view’s of love ends up taking away from her argument more than helping it. Rather than providing ample evidence of her claims, her diction mocks what the reader may believe. Fredrickson’s choice of using “so-called” makes it seem like she is making fun of the way we may think. Love is what you make of it, and while her views have some validity, her presentation gives her writing an egoistic feeling. If the question - “what does love mean to you?” - was to be asked to people all around the world, no two answers would be exactly the same. Different cultures, upbringings, and relationships shape the way each and every person perceives love, so by restricting what love is “supposed” to be, Fredrickson alienates her audience.
Moreover, as Fredrickson attempts to convince the reader that their opinions are invalid, she begins to support her own claims with scientific experiments filled with various errors. Although some of these experiments do help her argument, there are many issues throughout that remain unaddressed. In the “neuron coupling” experiment between the two subjects, one subject recorded a story about their prom experience, and the other subject would later have the story played back to them. Both subjects would have their brain activity monitored then compared to find points where their brain activity synced up. The point of the study is to illustrate how brain activity will mirror each other when two people are invested in a conversation. Now take a moment to think about the important aspects of different conversations. When you picture yourself at a job interview, you think of sitting up straight, making eye contact, smiling politely, and having a firm handshake. Next, imagine yourself at a friend’s house, you will think of having a lax posture, sitting close together, and smiling uncontrollably. The aspect that distinguishes a job interview from a casual hangout is the way you use your body language; this is because the key part of communication is the visual aspect. Thus, the listening experiment is flawed. Fredrickson states that the two subjects did not “[get] to see each other’s gestures, meet each other’s eyes, or even take turns speaking,” and even addresses that the exchange was a “pretty artificial conversation” (Fredrickson 111). A conversation contains more than a simple listening exercise, and because the data does not accurately portray an everyday conversation, this experiment is not as applicable to the everyday acts of love that she describes. Additionally, the vagus nerve experiment involved testing the effect of “loving-kindness meditation” on the improvement of vagal tone (Fredrickson 119). This study relied on people reporting their feelings and interactions each day. Because the experiment required heavy reliance on people logging in their own data, there is a high risk for human error. For example, if there are two people in the study, one who is severely depressed and another who has no mental health issues, these two very different people will have very different ways of experiencing the “emotions and social connections” that they were told to log (Fredrickson 119). One’s perception of the world cannot be standardized. Because the nature of each individual cannot be a controlled variable, this can hinder the ability of the reader to fully accept the data that Fredrickson provides as a proper representation of her argument.
Furthermore, another issue that appears in Fredrickson’s writing is the contradictions that may confuse the reader.

Her entire article is about love and it’s meaning, yet she provides conflicting information about the topic. At one point she says “your body’s definition of love…[allows for] a clear path [to emerge],” while on the next page she writes that the reader “can think of love, or positivity resonance, as one of the more complex and recurrent scenes nested within the act of your day” (Fredrickson 108, 109). The essence of Fredrickson’s argument is about love, yet she cannot properly explain the concept in a clear way to the reader. The conflicting ideas of “clear path” and “complex and recurrent scenes” weakens the strength of her argument. On the same note, Fredrickson contradicts herself as she begins to describe how oxytocin connects you to other people. In an experiment, a brain scanner was used to show what areas of a person’s brain lit up when they were told to imagine something painful occurring to them. When these same people were told to imagine their loved ones in the same situation, the same areas of the brain would light up. The first issue with the oxytocin experiment is that her statements contradict her ideas of relating with others during times of distress. In her work she writes, “When you’re feeling bad--afraid, anxious, or angry--even your best friend can seem pretty remote or separate from you” (Fredrickson 113). This provides a conflicting idea to her statement that “your loved one’s pain is your pain” (Fredrickson 113). So one may ask: if you feel the pain your loved ones are feeling, then how can you feel more remote to those loved ones who are undergoing a painful or negative emotion? Contradicting information not only perplexes the reader, but it also makes the overall strength of an argument weaken considerably. As a writer and a psychologist, Fredrickson is responsible for putting more care in her choice of words to avoid

confusion and misinformation.
Hence, through her inability to properly address her audience, the weakness of her scientific examples, and the contradictory statements scattered throughout, Barbara Fredrickson fails to strengthen her claims and convince the audience of her point. Therefore, no matter how knowledgeable Fredrickson may be, if her experiments are littered with sources of error and her arguments are contradictory, the reader will not be able to grasp onto her ideas. Just as the President needs personality to win people over in an election, Fredrickson needs her written word to convince the audience that she is not only knowledgeable but also eloquent.