Rapt Chapter Six:

"Attention, from the Latin for “reach toward,” is the most basic ingredient in any relationship, from a casual friendship to a lifelong marriage. Giving and receiving the undivided sort, however briefly, is the least that one person can do for another and sometimes the most."

"Because it’s impossible to communicate, much less bond, with someone who can’t or won’t focus on you, that capacity is crucial ..."

"Evolution seems to have designed us to pay attention to others not just so that we can do what they do, but also to feel what they feel."

"LEAVING ASIDE THE question of whether focusing on multiple electronic communications seemingly at once is a good thing, lots of research shows that simply paying attention to someone else—the essence of bonding—is highly beneficial for both parties. Indeed, having social ties is the single best predictor of a longer, healthier, more satisfying life. At the very least, paying attention to someone else confers the big psychological benefits of structuring your experience and distracting you from the self-referential rumination that so often takes a negative cast."

"Research by the Canadian psychologist Joanne Wood shows that if you want to feel better about who you are, you should concentrate on someone of lower status, but if you’re trying to get motivated, you should fix on a person who outranks you."

"When they’re focused on either a social activity or a task, the moods of even fragile or stressed people, including breast-cancer patients, bulimics, and chronic depressives, are no different from those of average subjects in control groups but drop precipitously when they’re alone or have nothing to attend to."

"Simple socializing is good, but as Wordsworth and Coleridge, Jefferson and Madison, and Butch and Sundance knew, hanging out with a kindred spirit who focuses not just on you but also on the same hopes and dreams is even better. As well-matched tennis partners, chess players, book-group members, and spouses can attest, along with the benefits of bonding, such relationships provide a benign stimulus to be, as the marines put it, “the best you can be.” "

"The message that paying attention to the other guy often helps you more than him is not one that you often hear from the therapy and psychopharmacology industries. In their different ways, each encourages you to look inward, whether psychologically or biologically, for answers to a better life."

"In contrast to the outward, other-directed focus that prevails in much of the world, people in the highly individualistic West are encouraged early on to concentrate on their own needs and desires."

"As if to reinforce their highly personalized experience, Western children are encouraged to pay lots of attention to objects. “Even little babies have toys,” says Ochs, “and they’re taught to pay attention to their shapes and colors.” (Despite the claims made for products marketed to hopeful parents, one study showed that rather than creating infant geniuses, focusing babies aged eight to sixteen months on “educational” videos actually impedes their verbal development; each hour of viewing per day correlated with a child’s knowing six to eight fewer words than unwired peers.)"

"they examined a seemingly important moment in the day—the parents’ homecoming in the evening—and found that the overriding dynamic was the children’s continued focus on their own little worlds, often electronic. For that matter, spouses paid little more attention to each other than their kids did to them. A child might briefly tune in on a returning mother. Over 80 percent of the time, however, fathers were either ignored or treated as a “secondary focus,” perhaps meriting a wave or a high five. The bottom line, says Ochs, is that it’s “rare” for a child to get up and say to a returning parent, “How are you?” "

"If there’s one hallowed, Norman Rockwell moment in which family members are supposed to pay attention to one another, it’s dinnertime. Yet the UCLA team found a stark contrast between the reverent lip service paid to the ritual and the widespread avoidance of the actual experience. On one hand, Ochs says, Americans assert that gathering the family around the table every night is very important and that not doing so is “the reason for drugs, delinquency, obesity—everything!” On the other hand, the families in the study dine together only 17 percent of the time, even if everyone is at home.

To put it mildly, as Ochs says, the postmodern dinner is “no longer about ‘Let’s all sit down and say grace together.’” Rather than focusing family members on each other around the groaning board, the new custom is a “staggered meal” that occurs at different times, in different rooms, and with different participants. On a typical evening, two people might eat take-out chicken in the kitchen. Someone else wanders in and joins, then one person leaves. Upstairs, yet another member nibbles on pizza while working on a computer.

Interestingly, when asked why they don’t dine together more often, families answer with the ubiquitous “busy-busy” lament that other unavoidable commitments—to jobs, meetings, lessons, sports—have forced them to cut back on time for domestic togetherness. Crocodile tears notwithstanding, the researchers discovered surprisingly little objective support for this assertion. Instead, says Ochs, “We simply found that some families make dinner together a priority, and most don’t.”"

"IN “THE SOUL selects her own Society,” Emily Dickinson describes the exclusive, rapt focus that marks your closest ties:

I’ve known her—from an ample nation—

Choose One—

Then—close the Valves of her attention—

Like Stone—

The relationship most associated with such intimacy, or the intense attachment that’s rooted in each partner’s special concentration on the other, has traditionally been considered integral to the good life, yet marriage seems increasingly endangered. In sharp contrast to a dramatic increase in cohabitation, the number of wedded couples is falling. Because informal domestic relationships tend to be less stable and more conflicted, this big change poses obvious cultural and socioeconomic risks, particularly for the women and children who end up as single-parent families. Yet as the director of the UCLA family project’s “marriage lab,” Bradbury is equally concerned about the implications for adults’ well-being, because “marriage seems like the last bastion of relationships in which people are still committed to attending to one another.”

A profound focus on your partner is, was, and always will be the distinguishing characteristic of an intimate bond such as marriage—at least, that’s the theory, says Bradbury. “Nevertheless, I’m continually impressed by the inconsistency of sustained attention in relationships. Partners complain about this all the time, and kids probably would, too, if they could. We’ve evolved with the capacity to attend to each other, but it’s not exactly dominant in our lives. Imagine a world where it was!”

In that ideal realm, you not only would pay particular attention to your partner but would do so in an especially constructive way."

" “It’s not just that we have different feelings and experiences,” Bradbury says. “My wife is attending to a totally different world than I am. She has to try to share her world with me, because I don’t have access to it. That’s why communication matters so much.” "

"Videotapes of how couples divide up chores revealed two basic approaches. Partners in one camp concentrate together on a list of routine tasks, figure out a scheme for handling them—he washes the dishes, she cooks, or vice versa—then mostly stick to the plan and mind their own business. Couples in the other group have a very different way of focusing on even regularly occurring chores, such as taking out the trash and doing the laundry. They treat each occasion as if it were the first time, which means they continually negotiate who’s responsible. If Joey has to get to his piano lesson every Wednesday, a simple errand that could have easily been scheduled for a whole year becomes a weekly wrangle that drains both partners’ finite supplies of attention and good humor. In a healthy relationship, says Bradbury, “you work out a lot of things so that you don’t have to keep attending to and talking about them.” "

"In any relationship, from student and teacher to boss and worker, the person of lower status benefits by paying careful attention to the person with more clout."

"No matter what problem might arise in a relationship, the first step toward solving it generally involves redirecting your attention—usually outward to the other person."

" “The more I know that my partner’s interests run with my own, the less I feel threatened by differences, even in arguments, and the more we can forge a common view of reality and focus on each other.” "

"Finally, it’s important for both partners in a relationship to stay focused on the kind of behavior that brought them together in the first place and to keep it alive. his is hardly news to anyone who has ever glanced at a breakfast show or a women’s magazine, yet the incidence of candlelit dinners, bouquets, and romantic poems drops steeply after the first year or two of marriage, just when such niceties are really needed."

"Avoiding this pitfall requires paying attention to the little things and imposing strategies, like the good old Friday-night date, especially one that features a fresh, highly engaging activity. “Seeing a movie is okay,” says Bradbury, “but square dancing is better, because that kind of situation, like travel, means you really have to interact. A relationship takes work, and you have to focus on its maintenance.”

"ATTENTION FEELS SO internal and personal that it’s easy to overlook its tremendous role in social life. Nevertheless, the first step toward any relationship is focusing on someone who returns the favor. If the bond is to become intimate, both parties must commit not only to paying rapt attention to the other, but also to the effort of seeing that person’s often very different world, which entails lots of communication."

"The home would seem to be the one place where people focus on each other and share the same reality. Yet some sobering research shows that, pulled into their own little worlds by an individualistic me-first culture and accelerating demands on their attention, American couples and families often fall short in this regard."

"In short, it has perhaps never been more important for Americans to join together in choosing our goals wisely and staying focused on them over time."

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grok:

"In this chapter, Winifred Gallagher explores the pivotal role of attention in human relationships. Drawing from evolutionary psychology, sociology, and personal anecdotes, she argues that attention—literally "reaching toward" another—is not just a courtesy but a biological and emotional necessity that fosters bonding and enhances life quality.

The Essence of Attention in Bonding

Attention is portrayed as the bedrock of any relationship, enabling communication, empathy, and shared experiences. Evolution has wired humans to mirror others' actions and emotions through focused attention, allowing us to "feel what they feel." This capacity goes beyond mere survival; it's key to forming deep connections. Gallagher emphasizes that undivided attention, even briefly, is a profound gift, while its absence hinders bonding. She cites research showing that social ties are the strongest predictor of longevity, health, and happiness—surpassing factors like wealth or exercise. Paying attention to others structures one's experience, diverting from self-focused negativity (e.g., rumination), and benefits the giver as much as the receiver. For instance, studies by Joanne Wood suggest focusing on someone of lower status boosts self-esteem, while attending to a superior motivates personal growth.

Gallagher contrasts this with the inward orientation promoted by therapy and psychopharmacology, which encourage self-analysis. Instead, she advocates an "outward, other-directed focus," common in collectivist cultures but waning in the individualistic West. Here, children are trained early to prioritize personal needs and objects (e.g., toys emphasizing shapes and colors), potentially at the expense of interpersonal skills. She critiques "educational" videos for infants, noting they may actually delay verbal development rather than enhance it.

Social and Familial Dynamics

The chapter delves into everyday interactions, highlighting how attention sustains moods and relationships. Even vulnerable individuals (e.g., cancer patients, depressives) report moods comparable to healthy people when engaged socially or in tasks, but their well-being plummets in isolation. Simple socializing is beneficial, but "kindred spirits"—like close friends or partners sharing goals—offer deeper rewards, inspiring excellence through mutual focus, as seen in historical duos like Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Gallagher draws on UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) research to reveal stark gaps in American family attention. Despite idealizing family dinners as bonding rituals, families dine together only 17% of the time, often opting for "staggered meals" amid distractions like electronics. Children frequently ignore returning parents, prioritizing their own worlds, and spouses show similar disengagement. The "busy-busy" excuse for this fragmentation lacks evidence; instead, it's a choice, with some families prioritizing togetherness while most do not. This reflects broader cultural pulls toward individualism and fragmented attention.

Intimate Relationships and Marriage

A significant portion focuses on marriage as the "last bastion" of committed attention, yet one increasingly threatened by rising cohabitation and declining wedlock. Intimacy demands exclusive, rapt focus—echoing Emily Dickinson's poem about the soul selecting its society and sealing off distractions. However, sustained attention is inconsistent in modern relationships, leading to complaints from partners and potential risks for societal stability, especially for women and children.

Gallagher, informed by UCLA's Thomas Bradbury, stresses that partners inhabit "totally different worlds," making communication essential for bridging them. Healthy couples efficiently allocate chores without endless negotiation, freeing attention for meaningful interaction. To resolve conflicts, redirecting focus outward—to the partner's perspective—builds empathy and shared reality, reducing threat from differences. Maintaining initial courtship behaviors (e.g., romantic gestures) is crucial, as they often fade post-honeymoon, yet are vital for longevity of the relationship. Strategies like novel activities (e.g., square dancing over movies) or regular dates demand intentional focus to counteract routine.

Broader Implications

The chapter concludes by underscoring attention's overlooked social dimension: relationships begin with mutual focus and deepen through effort to understand another's reality. In an era of distractions and individualism, Americans risk isolation by retreating into personal silos. Gallagher calls for wise goal selection and sustained focus on shared priorities to counteract this, implying that revitalizing attention in relationships could yield profound personal and cultural benefits.

Overall, the chapter is a nuanced critique of modern attentional habits, blending science, observation, and philosophy to advocate for deliberate, outward-directed focus as a path to richer connections."