Social Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect

Matthew D. Lieberman

eBook - 2013

We are profoundly social creatures—more than we know. In Social, renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman explores groundbreaking research in social neuroscience revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter. Because of this, our brain uses its spare time to learn about the social world—other people and our relation to them. It is believed that we must commit 10,000 hours to master a skill. According to Lieberman, each of us has spent 10,000 hours learning to make sense of people and groups by the time we are ten. Social argues that our need to reach out to and connect with others is a primary driver behind our behavior. We believe that pain and pleasure al...one guide our actions. Yet, new research using fMRI—including a great deal of original research conducted by Lieberman and his UCLA lab—shows that our brains react to social pain and pleasure... more