Dopamine

What Is the Natural Job of Dopamine?

Dopamine is the good feeling that a reward is at hand. It’s your brain’s signal that you are about to meet a need. Dopamine motivates the investment of energy in steps toward rewards. Each step closer stimulates more, but the dopamine stops once the need is met. To get more, your brain scans for the next opportunity to meet a need. Dopamine motivates constant survival action by making it feel good. Each brain defines rewards with neural pathways built from its own past dopamine surges.

In the state of nature, you had no refrigerator so you had to forage constantly to survive. And you needed social opportunity for your genes alive to survive. Dopamine triggers a feeling of excitement when you see a new way to meet a need. It motivates you to approach the reward in anticipation of more good feelings. Once the need is met, the good feeling stops. You have to meet another need to enjoy more. This is why our ancestors kept seeking, and why we’re here today.

Why Do We Do Things for Dopamine That Are Bad for Survival?

Dopamine flows for reasons that are hard to make sense of. It can motivate you to seek rewards that you’re better off without. The reason is simple: neurons connect when dopamine flows, which wires you to repeat behaviors that spark it. Dopamine is like paving on your neural pathways, linking every neuron active at the moment it turned on. This is not what you consciously link to happiness. It’s everything associated with past moments of relief.

Dopamine turns on when you see an oppportunity to meet a need, but it turns off as soon as the need is met. So we are motivated to keep finding ways to spark more. When your dopamine stops, it’s not a crisis. It’s just a neutral space for surveying your options. Knowing this frees you from rushing into old dopamine-stimulating habits.

Dopamine in 1 minute (as relevant to love). Credit: Convicts

Complete details on how to do this are in my book, below. A free introduction is in my 5-day happy-chemical jumpstart. (Click the newsletter monkey in the sidebar to the right.) A fast introduction is in this blog post, Score! Dopamine! Repeat! Or Not: Why goals don’t bring satisfaction. And my 5-day Happy Chemical Jumpstart has a great introduction to dopamine and the four other chemicals that guide all mammals to meet their survival needs.