Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (44 page)
Read Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect Online
Authors: Matthew D. Lieberman
Tags: #Psychology, #Social Psychology, #Science, #Life Sciences, #Neuroscience, #Neuropsychology
I have also been blessed with the best students and staff in the world.
I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to spend my time thinking with everyone who has come through the UCLA Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory: David Amodio, Elliot Berkman, Lisa Burklund, Liz Castle, Joan Chiao, Jessica Cohen, David Creswell, Molly Crockett, Janine Dutcher, Emily Falk, Ben Gunter, Kate Haltom, Erica Hornstein, Tristen Inagaki, Johanna Jarcho, Yoona Kang, Carrie Masten, Sarah Master, Meghan Meyer, Mona Moieni, Sylvia Morelli, Keely Muscatell, Junko Obayashi, Jenn Pfeifer, Josh Poore, Lian Rameson, Ajay Satpute, Julie Smurda, Bob Spunt, Golnaz Tabibnia, Eva Telzer, Sabrina Tom, Jared Torre, Stephanie Vezich, Baldwin Way, Locke Welborn, and Charlene Wu.
All of you are amazing.
Without my agent, Max Brockman,
this
book would never have existed.
He played the role of Socrates’ Daimon for a long time.
Thank you for saying no to the first several proposals I sent you over the course of two years and then finally saying yes when we got to this one.
As frustrating as those no’s were at the time, I shudder to
think of what I would have ended up with had you said yes to any of my initial proposals.
To my editor, Roger Scholl, and everyone at Crown—thank you so much for your help and support, every step of the way.
You have been fantastic to work with.
You made something incredibly daunting into something merely daunting.
As I began writing the book itself, I made a point of spending some time reading fiction every day to try to keep my mind nudged toward writing more like a novelist and a little less like an academic.
I read wonderful books by Haruki Murakami, Hugh Howey, Paul Auster, Michael Cox, David Mitchell, Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip K.
Dick, Matthew Mather, Ernest Cline, and Wilkie Collins.
Along similar lines, I’m glad I had Pandora on every day while I was writing with Tycho, Ulrich Schnauss, Riceboy Sleeps, Ambulance, William Orbit, Vector Lovers, Loess, Casino versus Japan, Broken-kites, Her Space Holiday, Deosil, Infinite Scale, Boards of Canada, Trentemoller, Eluvium, William Basinski, and Michael Maricle all in the mix.
All of you helped keep in me in the right frame of mind—absorbing the part of my mind that needed some level of constant distraction.
I’m grateful to my colleagues and friends who gave me feedback on particular chapters: Robin Dunbar, Sarah Endo, Dan Gilbert, Jonah Lehrer, Jenn Pfeifer, Eva Telzer, Nim Tottenham, and James Yang.
Special thanks go to the Neuroleadership Institute.
For years, you’ve allowed me to give talks to people who care about applying neuroscience findings in organizational and educational contexts, and this experience has shaped my thinking again and again.
In particular, I want to thank the folks who heard my plea for chapter reviews and went on to give me awesome feedback: Samad Aidane, Tom Battye, Marcy Beck, Pratt Bennet, Ken Buch, Corinne Canter, Christine Comaford, Garry Davis, Jon Downes, Barrie Dubois, Mary Federico, Sara Ford, Todd Gailun, Philip Greenwood, Robert Hutter, Shelley Johnson, Kory Kogon, Per Kristiansen, Kate Larsen, Dan Marshall, Jason Ollander-Krane, Bert Overlack, Thaler Pekar,
Lynn Quinn, Al Ringleb, Lisa Rubinstein, Sylvan Schulz, Mary Spatz, Bonnie St.
John, Robert Weinberg, Lucy West, Scott Winter, and Susan Wright.
I want to single out two people for high praise—each of whom was involved in more ways than I can count in bringing
Social
into existence (though neither is to blame for any of its imperfections).
First, David Rock, director of the Neuroleadership Institute.
Since our first (dodgy) meeting several years ago, you’ve pushed me to make the neuroscience relevant to non-neuroscientists and to work harder to learn to communicate better so I could do that.
Thank you for all the opportunities to connect at your summits with all the wonderful folks in the NLI world.
It has been transformative.
Thank you for reading the entire book and giving me line-by-line feedback.
Thank you for spending that day in San Francisco going over all the feedback and helping me brainstorm changes for the book.
Back when the book was only ten chapters, you wrote at the end: “nine chapters smart, one chapter useful!”
You challenged me to write new chapters on well-being and the workplace after I thought I had written the last word, and I believe the book is much better for it.
Finally, to Naomi.
There would be no book to write without you, and I certainly would not have been capable of writing it.
Since I came to UCLA, you have been my partner in work and in life.
Every bit of my science and every chapter of this book is better because of you.
And all the feedback you have given me on my writing has always made it better—every single time.
You are brilliant, and you amaze me again and again (and again).
I appreciate everything you have done for me so deeply—for this book, through our research at UCLA, and in our life together with Ian.
Chapter 1: Who Are We?
The research my wife and I have done | |
Mondale, not exactly a spring chicken | |
Social psychologist Steve Fein asked | |
Imagine watching the debate yourself | |
While we tend to think it is our capacity | |
In many situations, the more you turn on the brain network | |
In the toddler years, forms of social thinking develop | |
During the preteen and teenage years, adolescents |
Chapter 2: The Brain’s Passion
In 1997, Gordon Shulman and his colleagues | |
The early name given to describe the network | |
The second name given to this network | |
the network in the brain that reliably shows up | |
One study looked at which brain regions were engaged | |
the claim that Malcolm Gladwell made famous | |
One study found that 70 percent of the content | |
when Robert Spunt, Meghan Meyer, and I gave people only a few seconds | |
when you read the word “face” | |
You are more likely to see faces at first | |
“general intelligence applied to social situations” | |
In a study of more than 13,000 people | |
can we conclude our sociality is an accident | |
Friendship has been documented in | |
the closer friends become, the less they tend to keep | |
Americans spend 84 billion minutes per month | |
we give an average of $300 billion a year | |
The brain regions reliably associated with general intelligence | |
the more this network turns on, the more the general | |
To the extent that the social cognition network stays | |
A group of children with Asperger’s | |
The human brain weighs in at about 1,300 grams | |
newer parts of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex | |
In adult humans, the brain makes up approximately | |
evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar made the provocative claim | |
Neocortex ratio | |
When the relative size of the neocortex is correlated | |
Later work demonstrated that these effects | |
This is referred to as “Dunbar’s number” | |
village size, estimated from as long ago as 6000 BC | |
The most obvious advantage to larger groups | |
Primates with strong social skills can limit | |
When we reach Dunbar’s number |