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Comment by NickM | Hacker News Reader

Glad to see "chemical imbalance" make the list. It is very common to see people use terms like "dopamine hit", "endorphin rush", "low serotonin", etc. in ways that don't make scientific sense.

I assume people do it to sound knowledgeable or to make it sound like their ideas are backed by science, but neurotransmitters are vastly more complicated and subtle in their effects than is implied by these kinds of usages, and emotions and behaviors are tremendously more complex than the "my neurotransmitters made me do it/feel it" narrative would suggest.

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Using inappropriately technical jargon (especially “dopamine”) is one of my pet peeves (which I just get more of the older I get).

Why, say, describe fond feelings or affection as “oxytocin”? Do you know anything about this neurotransmitter? Or are you just using it as a fancy synonym for love and affection? Is the vernacular English language—but I guess pop-neurotransmitters are vernacular now—too impoverished to talk about love and affection?

Same thing goes for “dopamine”. Did reading a factually wrong comment make you angry, or did you get a “dopamine hit” that motivated you to reply to it? Were you validated by the upvotes, or did you get a “dopamine hit”? Why describe pleasure, anger, comfort, etc. etc. as just “dopamine”?

It seems to me that fetishizing things by pinning pleasure on something ostensibly tangible like dopamine is just too irresistible. Now we can pretend that we actually know ourselves in the ancient Greek self by talking about our indulgent and sinful behavior as just “dopamine”.

For similar reasons I don’t like when people in meditation circles obsess over “the ego”. Every little mind-wandering and slip-up becomes the fault of the fetish that is “the ego”.

Edit: Of course this is how laypeople relate to neurotransmitters while the submission is about psychologists. So this is a side-topic.

> Every little mind-wandering and slip-up becomes the fault of the fetish that is “the ego”.

Ironically, you’ve here used “fetish” in a way that the article explicitly admonishes, opting instead for the vernacular definition. And I think that’s okay! Language is about communication, if when you say fetish I know what you mean, and when other people say dopamine I know what they mean, who cares what the diction police say?

Not really. First of all, see my edit, which was there many hours before your reply: This is a side-topic about laypeople misappropriating technical terms, while the submission is about professional (social) psychologists. I am not a psychologist, did not attempt to discuss psychology, hence this attempted gotcha is invalid.

Second of all, my attempt (butchered or not) at using this word has no relation to the field of psychology at all since it is inspired by Marx’s use, who probably got it from Hegel (predates professional psychology, does it not?). The vernacular meaning (apparently, according to MW) means to be very fond of something. But what I mean in this context has got nothing to do with being in love with some inanimate object (in a non-sexual way); it means to use some object (although in this case an abstract one) as something to fixate on in lieu of appreciating and understanding wholly non-tangible things that may only be fully understood as relations. In this case, instead of trying to comprehend the mind as more of a web of associations, of cause and effect, you/they invent the fetish of the very animated “ego” which is trying to sabotage your every effort to achieve mindfulness, perform better in your corporate job, or what have you.

While I agree that the term should be on the list (as it is a catch-all term unlikely to describe a given phenomenon), it is not that "chemical imbalance" does not exist.

For example, dopamine-related drugs relatively consistently lower ADHD symptoms.

A given example that serotonin-reducing drugs can alleviate depression hardly makes the point.

One common (and false) belief is that "depression is caused by low serotonin". It is certainly way more complicated than that; otherwise, SSRIs would be as effective for depression as dopamine-increasing drugs work for ADHD.

Counterpoint: there are four families of Dopamine receptors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_receptor

and 7 families of Serotonin receptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT_receptor

and many of them have orthogonal effects.

When I teach abnormal psychology, I like to ask my students "If Prozac is an SSRI, it increases Serotonin receptor activity. However, LSD is a Sertonin agonist, so it also increases Serotonin receptor activity. Why therefore do Prozac and LSD not give the same experience?"

At the same time we have a need to make sense of things. And having a rough relatable framework can be part of the therapy. I can also see why it might be dangerous “e.g. dopamine hit good, what foods/drugs will give me that”

What becomes clearer by labeling things with neurotransmitters? Did you just not know your own habitual motivations? In that case some technical jargon won’t make you wiser or smarter.

> What becomes clearer by labeling things with neurotransmitters?

The relation with addiction.

For example why most of the value of a todo list is the writing down and ticking off. And tiny todos (fill water bottle) give the same kick as big ones. Now if you understand that the it motivates you to have todo lists, use them and craft them well and build a chain of success.

Having a mental model of why something works for me at least is a big motivator. The laws of thermodynamics don’t help you lose weight but they sure make it clear it is possible (or if your body absolutely cannot burn fat, you die).

I don't see anything wrong with the term "dopamine hit". It's the main neurotransmitter involved in the brain's reward system. Rewarding stimulus is exactly what is meant by popular use of the term.

I really don't understand attempts to problematize the use of this term. Sure, there are other neurotransmitters involved and dopamine is also present in other systems and even in the rest of the body. Nobody denies that.

Despite what we have been taught—and what is still commonly stated—dopamine is what motivates behavior (motivational salience), not what makes us feel good after the behavior. Plenty of citations on Wikipedia if you want to dig.

The problem is the dumbing down of complex mechanisms into sound bites. Both dopamine and rewards systems are a lot more complicated than they're presented and not very well understood. But you can buy self-help/popsci books that give you very incorrect simplistic pictures of how these things work.

Maybe the term "dopamine hit" is fine when it's just that, but people base their whole understanding of their brain based on dopamine does this, seratonin does that, etc.

Yes, I agree that it's dumbed down but not everything has to be a scientifically accurate discussion. I think it's a useful term to easily communicate complex concepts. Dopamine hit for any pleasurable addicting stimulus. Dopamine dripfeed for social media's endless stream of tailored content. The word dopamine is in there to associate the idea with addictive drugs and the way they take over the brain's reward center.

> The goal of this article is to promote clear thinking and clear writing among students and teachers of psychological science by curbing terminological misinformation and confusion.

> We also do not address problematic terms that are restricted primarily to popular (“pop”) psychology, such as “codependency,” “dysfunctional,” “toxic,” “inner child,” and “boundaries,” as our principal focus is on questionable terminology in the academic literature. Nevertheless, we touch on a handful of pop psychology terms (e.g., closure, splitting) that have migrated into at least some academic domains.

I’m not aware that “dopamine hit” has migrated into some academic domains as it is kind of a slang among laypeople with the meaning of indulging in an activity they like. So I think “dopamine hit” specifically is out of scope for this article. “Chemical imbalance” on the other hand is a problematic term that has been used historically to promote inaccurate—and thoroughly disproved—models of mental illness. I guess the term is—somewhat worryingly—still being used among academics in the literature, and that’s why it was granted a place on this list.

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