Social Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect

385 Pages·2013·12.22 MB·English

by  Matthew D. Lieberman

Social
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Social
Why Our Brains
Are Wired to Connect
Matthew D. Lieberman
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Matthew D. Lieberman 2013
Illustrations credits: Fred Haynes (pages: 11, 22, 29, 42, 57, 67, 82,
166, 230, and 245); Jane Whitney (pages: 17, 26, 51, 75, 113,
116, 135, 158, 171, 184, 185, 187, and 209)
Th e moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013947875
ISBN 978–0–19–964504–6
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
For Naomi and Ian,
who showed me what my social brain was for
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Part One: Beginnings 1
1 Who Are We? 3
2 The Brain’s Passion 14
Part Two: Connection 37
3 Broken Hearts and Broken Legs 39
4 Fairness Tastes like Chocolate 71
Part Three: Mindreading 101
5 Mental Magic Tricks 103
6 Mirror, Mirror 131
7 Peaks and Valleys 151
Part Four: Harmonizing 179
8 Trojan Horse Selves 181
9 Panoptic Self- Control 203
Part Five: Smarter, Happier, More Productive 239
10 Living with a Social Brain 241
viii | Contents
11 The Business of Social Brains 257
12 Educating the Social Brain 275
Epilogue 299
Acknowledgments 305
Notes 309
Index 366
PREFACE
Centuries ago,
the philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote,
“Pain and pleasure . . . govern us in all we do, in all we say,
in all we think.” There is little doubt that we are drawn to physical
pleasure and work hard to avoid physical pain. But do they “govern
us in all we do”? Is this all that we are? I think they govern us far
less than we typically assume. The institutions and incentive struc-
tures of society operate largely in accordance with Bentham’s claim
and thus are missing out on some of the most profound motivators
of human behavior.
What Bentham and the rest of us typically overlook is that hu-
mans are wired with another set of interests that are just as basic
as physical pain and pleasure. We are wired to be social. We are
driven by deep motivations to stay connected with friends and fam-
ily. We are naturally curious about what is going on in the minds of
other people. And our identities are formed by the values lent to us
from the groups we call our own. These connections lead to strange
behaviors that violate our expectation of rational self- interest and
make sense only if our social nature is taken as a starting point for
who we are.
Over the past two decades, my colleagues and I have created a
new kind of science called social cognitive neuroscience. Using tools
like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we have made
startling discoveries of how the human brain responds to the social
world— discoveries that were not possible before. These fi ndings