R. Douglas Fields, a neurobiologist in his 50s, won’t hesitate to lock a pickpocket into a deadly chokehold in the middle of the street. He’s done it before.
Fields isn’t a badass, crime-fighting martial artist whose cover is his day job in the lab — he’s just like everyone else. But when his wallet was snatched while traveling in Barcelona with his 17-year-old daughter in 2010, you could say he just, well, snapped. He didn’t have time to think. He jumped into action.
He got his wallet back.
That incident in Spain stuck with Fields, and it inspired his new book, Why We Snap: Understanding the Rage Circuit in Your Brain. Fields is a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland and the editor-in-chief of Neuron Glia Biology. He set out to understand the rage circuit and examined the latest research into human aggression.
Most violent behavior, Fields discovered, results from a clash between our evolutionary hardwiring and our modern world. To put it bluntly: Our rage circuit wasn’t designed for daily commutes on crowded highways or the deluge of social media affecting our relationships. Through his research, Fields outlines the nine primary triggers of the human rage circuit and puts them into the handy mnemonic LIFEMORTS: Life-or-death situation, Insult, Family, Environment, Mate, Order in society, Resources, Tribe and Stopped (being restrained or cornered).
