Book Reviewed: Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, by Matthew D. Lieberman
Our desire to connect with others is an important behavior that is evolved and our brains have complex biochemical mechanisms to support this. What makes our basic need for someone to love and respect us, or we like to love and respect someone? These basic social needs are present at birth to ensure our survival and we are guided by those needs until the end, says UCLA professor Matthew Lieberman, the author of this book. For example, the mammalian young are born strongly dependent on mother for protection and survival, unlike newborn in lower strata of the evolutionary ladder. Therefore the evolutionary mechanisms provided safeguards in the brain (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula) which creates a painful response in the offspring, when it is separated from the mother, and consequently makes distress calls. The brain also has reward system which is sensitive both to giving and receiving care in the parent and child respectively. This results in social bonding between mother and offspring.
The social pain and pleasure make use of the same neural machinery as physical pain and pleasure, creating a powerful motivational drive to maximize our positive social experiences and minimize the negative ones. Our capacity to mind-read others allow us to consider the goals, intentions, emotions and beliefs of others. The social imagination processed via mentalizing systems allow us to take coordination to the extremes, creating various symbolic social connections like the attachment we feel to sports teams, political parties, celebrities, music, movies and many more. This capacity allow us to build social institutions like schools, government, hospitals, courts, industries, etc.
The mentalizing system is active from the moment we are born, and it comes whenever we have downtime, even when we dream. It is estimated that we need about 10,000 hours to master a skill or learn to make sense of people. Human beings also have a self-system in the brain that serves a Trojan horse sneaking in the values and beliefs of others around us. The self-system improves our odds of being liked, loved and respected by others. The neuroimaging techniques are widely used to study and measure the neural basis of people's social interactions. The author mentions two such methods; functional magnetic resonance imaging and functional near infrared spectroscopy techniques. This is very well written book and I highly recommend this to anyone interested in behavioral sciences.
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