Of course we also need to weigh how we affect the lives of those close to us. How we impact others speaks to how we fulfill our very responsibilities as caring spouses, relatives, friends, and members of our communities.
An I-You approach to others lets empathy proceed to its natural next step, concerned action. The social brain then acts as our built-in guidance system for charity, good works, and compassionate acts. Given the raw social and economic realities of our time, this caring sensibility in social intelligence may carry an ever greater premium.
SOCIAL ENGINEERING
Martin Buber believed that the growing preponderance of I-It relationships in modern societies threatens human well-being. He warned against the “thingification” of people—the depersonalization of relationships that corrodes our quality of life and the human spirit itself.4
One prophetic voice that anticipated Buber was George Herbert Mead, an early twentieth-century American philosopher. Mead originated the idea of the “social self,” the sense of identity we form as we see ourselves in the mirror of our relationships. Mead proposed as a singular goal for social progress a “perfected social intelligence,” with greatly heightened rapport and mutual understanding.5
Such utopian ideals for the human community may seem out of synch with the tragedies and frictions of the twenty-first century. And the scientific sensibility in general—not just in psychology—has long been uncomfortable with the moral dimension, which many scientists would rather relegate to the humanities, to philosophy, or theology. But the exquisite social responsiveness of the brain demands that we realize that not just our own emotions but our very biology is being driven and molded, for better or for worse, by others—and in turn, that we take responsibility for how we affect the people in our lives.
Buber’s message for us today warns against an outlook that is indifferent to how others suffer and that uses social skills for purely selfish ends. And it commends the stance that empathizes and cares, a nurturing outlook that takes responsibility for others as well as for oneself.
That dichotomy has implications for social neuroscience itself. As always, the identical scientific insights can find malign or benign applications. An Orwellian use of social neuroscience findings could be their misapplication in, say, advertising or propaganda; fMRI readings of a target group’s response to a given message would be used to fine-tune and amplify the message’s emotional impact. In such a scenario the science devolves into a tool that allows media manipulators to drive home exploitative messages ever more powerfully.
That’s nothing new: unintended consequences of new inventions are an inevitable underside of technological progress. Each new generation of gadgetry floods society before we can fully know the difference it will make. The next new thing is always a social experiment in progress.
On the other hand, social neuroscientists are already planning far more benign applications. One of them would apply the discovery of a logarithm for empathy—that physiological match during moments of rapport—to train medical residents and psychotherapists to empathize better with patients. Another would use an ingenious fanny pack with physiology-monitoring wireless technology. Patients could wear it at home, twenty-four hours a day; it would automatically send a signal when it recognizes that the patient has begun falling, say, into an episode of depression—a virtual psychiatrist-on-call.6
Our emerging understanding of the social brain and the effects of our personal connections on our biology also point to a range of ways we might reengineer social institutions for the better. Given the nourishment offered by wholesome connection, the ways we treat the sick, the elderly, and the imprisoned must be reconsidered.
For the chronically ill or dying, for instance, we might do more than pool volunteers from a patient’s family and social circle to help, but also find support for the helpers. For the elderly, who are now so often tucked away in bleak and solitary arrangements, we might instead offer “cohousing,” residences where people of all ages live together and share many meals—so re-creating the extended family that harbored the aged through most of human history. And as we’ve seen, we can refocus our corrections system to affirm decent connections for prisoners rather than cutting them off from the very human ties that could help set them straight.
Then consider those who staff these institutions, from schools to hospitals to prisons. All these sectors are vulnerable to the accountant’s delusion that social goals can be assessed by fiscal measures alone. That mentality ignores the emotional connections that drive our very ability to be—and work—at our best.
Leaders need to realize that they themselves set much of the emotional tone that flows through the halls of their organizations, and that this in turn has consequence for how well the collective objectives are met—whether the outcome is measured in achievement test scores, sales goals, or retention of nurses.
And for all of this, as Edward Thorndike proposed in 1920, we need to nurture social wisdom, the qualities that allow the people we connect with to flourish.
THE GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS
The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan takes seriously their country’s “gross national happiness,” which they deem as important as the gross domestic product, a standard economic indicator.7 Public policy, the king declared, should be linked to people’s sense of well-being, not just to economics. To be sure, the pillars of national happiness in Bhutan include financial self-reliance, a pristine environment, health care, education preserving local culture, and democracy. But economic growth in itself is just part of the equation.
The gross national happiness is not just for Bhutan: the notion of placing as much or more value on people’s happiness and life satisfaction as on economic growth per se has been embraced by a small, but growing, international group of economists. They see as misguided the universal assumption in policy circles worldwide that the consumption of more goods means people feel better off. They are developing new ways to measure well-being in terms not just of income and employment but also of satisfaction with personal relationships and a sense of purpose in life.8
Daniel Kahneman noted the well-documented lack of correlation between economic advantages and happiness (apart from a large boost at the very bottom, when people go from being impoverished to being able to make a sparse living).9 Recently the realization has dawned among economists that their hyperrational models ignore the low road—and emotions in general—and so fail to predict with full precision the choices people will make, let alone what makes them happy.10
The term “technological fix”—meaning tech-engineered interventions in human affairs—was coined by Alvin Weinberg, a longtime director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and founder of the Institute for Energy Analysis. Weinberg came of age in the science of the 1950s and 1960s, an era given to the utopian vision that coming technologies offered panaceas for a range of human and social ills.11 One such proposal was a massive system of nuclear power plants that were supposed to lower energy costs radically—and if placed on an ocean shore, provide ample drinking water—so boosting the welfare of entire nations. (Lately a number of environmentalists have endorsed nuclear power as one solution to global warming.)
Now, as he has reached ninety, Weinberg’s views have taken a philosophical and cautionary turn. “Technology makes it easier and easier to disconnect from other people, and from ourselves,” Weinberg told me. “Civilization is in the midst of a vast singularity. What was once meaningful has been wiped away. Lives are lived sitting in front of a computer screen, getting personal connections at a distance. We live in a metaworld, with our focus fixed on the latest technology. But the issues that matter most are families, community, and social responsibility.”
As a presidential science adviser in the 1960s, Weinberg wrote an influential paper on what he called “criteria for scientific choice.” The paper introduced the notion that values could guide choices in science spending and were a valid question in the philosophy of science. Now, near
ly a half-century later, he has been reflecting further on what’s “useful,” or worthwhile, in setting a nation’s spending priorities. He tells me, “The conventional view holds that capitalism is the only efficient way to allocate resources. But it lacks compassion.
“I wonder whether the possibilities of our economic models are being exhausted—and whether the high level of global unemployment we’re seeing is actually structural and very deep, not a passing phenomenon. Perhaps there will always be a sizable—and probably growing—number of people who just can’t find good jobs. And then I wonder, how might we modify our system so that it’s not just efficient but compassionate?”
Paul Farmer, the public health crusader legendary for his work in Haiti and Africa, also decries the “structural violence” done by an economic system that keeps so many of the world’s poor too sick to escape their plight.12 For Farmer, one solution lies in treating health care as a human right and making its delivery a prime concern rather than an afterthought. Along those lines, Weinberg proposes that “a compassionate capitalism would require us to change priorities, set aside a larger portion of a national budget to good works. Modifying the economic system so that it becomes adequately compassionate would also make it much more stable politically.”
The economic theories that currently drive national policies, however, have few ways to take human suffering into account (although the economic costs of disasters like floods or famines are routinely estimated). One of the most graphic results has been policies that burden the poorest countries with such huge debts that they have too little left to pay for food or medical care for their children.
This economic attitude seems mindblind, lacking the ability to imagine the other’s reality. Empathy is essential for a compassionate capitalism, one where human misery and its alleviation carry weight.
That argues for building a society’s capacity for compassion. For example, economists might do well to study the wider benefits to society of socially intelligent parenting and of school curricula on social and emotional skills, both in the education system and in prisons.13 Such societywide efforts to optimize the workings of the social brain might cascade into lifetime paybacks both for children and for the communities where they live out their years. These benefits would range, I suspect, from higher achievement in school to better performance at work, from happier and more socially able children to better community safety and lifetime health. And people who are more educated, safer, and healthier contribute the most to any economy.
Grand speculations aside, warmer social connections could have immediate payoffs for us all.
THE RAW BUZZ OF FELLOW FEELING
The poet Walt Whitman, in his exuberant anthem “I Sing the Body Electric,” put it lyrically:
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough…
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
Vitality arises from sheer human contact, especially from loving connections. The people we care about most are an elixir of sorts, an ever-renewing source of energy. The neural exchange between a parent and child, a grandparent and a toddler, between lovers or a satisfied couple, or among good friends, has palpable virtues.
Now that neuroscience can put numbers to that raw buzz of fellow feeling, quantifying its benefits, we must pay attention to the biological impact of social life. The hidden links among our relationships, our brain function, and our very health and well-being are stunning in their implications.
We must reconsider the pat assumption that we are immune to toxic social encounters. Save for the passing stormy mood, we often suppose, our interactions matter little to us at any biological level. But this turns out to be a comforting illusion. Just as we catch a virus from someone else, we may also “catch” an emotional funk that makes us more vulnerable to that same virus or otherwise undermines our well-being.
From this perspective, strong distressing states like disgust, contempt, and explosive anger are the emotional equivalent of secondhand smoke that quietly damages the lungs of others who breathe it in. The interpersonal equivalent of health-boosting would be adding positive emotions to our surroundings.
In this sense, social responsibility begins here and now, when we act in ways that help create optimal states in others, from those we encounter casually to those we love and care about most dearly. In accord with Whitman, one scientist who studies the survival value of sociability says the practical lesson for us all comes down to “Nourish your social connections.”14
Well and good for our personal lives. But all of us are buffeted by the vast social and political currents of our time. The last century highlighted what divides us, confronting us with the limits to our collective empathy and compassion.
Through most of human history, the bitter antagonisms that stoked hatred between groups were manageable in a strictly logistical sense: The limited means of destruction available kept the damage relatively small. In the twentieth century, however, technology and organizational efficiency made the destructive potential of such hatred immensely greater. As a poet of those times, W. H. Auden, so pungently prophesied, “We must love one another or die.”
His stark outlook captures the urgency wrought by hatreds unleashed. But we need not be helpless. That sense of urgency can serve as a collective awakening, reminding us that the crucial challenge for this century will be to expand the circle of those we count among Us, and shrink the numbers we count as Them.
The new science of social intelligence offers us tools that can push those boundaries outward, step by step. For one, we need not accept the divisions that hatred breeds, but rather extend our empathy to understand one another despite our differences, and to bridge those divides. The social brain’s wiring connects us all at our common human core.
APPENDIX A
The High and Low Roads: A Note
The low road operates on automatic, outside our awareness, and with great speed. The high road operates with voluntary control, requires effort and conscious intent, and moves more slowly. The high-low dichotomy as I use it here helps us identify a distinction that clearly matters for behavior, but it may also oversimplify the messily complicated and interwoven circuitry of the brain.1
The neural specifics of both systems have yet to be worked out and are still under debate. One helpful summary has been made by Matthew Lieberman of UCLA. Lieberman calls the automatic mode the “X-system” (it includes the amygdala among other neural areas) and the control mode the “C-system” (it includes the anterior cingulate cortex and areas of the prefrontal cortex, as well as others).2
These massive systems work in parallel, intermixing automatic and controlled functions in various ratios. As we read, for instance, we decide what to look at and we intentionally reflect on meaning—high-road abilities—while scads of automatic mechanisms perform the countless supporting functions of recognizing pattern, meaning, decoding syntax, and the like. There may, in actuality, be no purely “high-road” mental function, though there are certainly innumerable low-road ones. In point of fact, what I describe here as a dichotomy—high versus low—is in reality a spectrum.
The high- and low-road typology collapses the two dimensions of cognitive-affective and automatic-controlled into a single dimension: automatic-affective and controlled-cognitive. Cases such as intentionally generated emotions (rare, but seen in actors who can emote at will) are set aside for the purposes of this discussion.3
The low road’s automatic processes appear to be the brain’s default mode, whirring along day and night. The high road mainly kicks in when these automatic processes are int
errupted—by an unexpected event, by a mistake, or when we intentionally grapple with our thoughts, such as in making a tough decision. In this view, much or most of our stream of thought runs on automatic, handling the routine—while saving what we must mull over, learn, or correct for the high road.
Nevertheless, if we so direct it, the high road can override the low, within limits. That very capacity gives us choice in life.
APPENDIX B
The Social Brain
In order for a new set of circuitry to arise in the brain, it has to have great value for those possessing it, heightening the chances that its possessor will live to pass that circuitry on through the generations. In the emergence of primates, living in groups was just such an adaptation. All primates live among others who can help meet the demands of life, thus multiplying the resources available to any single member of the group—and putting a premium on smooth social interactions. The social brain seems to be among Nature’s adaptive mechanisms for meeting the challenge of survival as part of a group.
What do neuroscientists mean when they speak of a “social brain”? The idea that the brain consists of discrete areas, each in charge of a specific task in isolation, seems as antiquated as those nineteenth-century phrenology charts that “explained” the meaning of bumps in the skull. But in actuality the circuitry for a given mental task is not localized in one place but is distributed throughout the brain; the more complex the task, the wider its distribution.
The zones of the brain interconnect with dizzying complexity, and so phrases like “social brain” are fictions, albeit helpful ones. For convenience, scientists look at orchestrated systems of the brain that cooperate during a given function. So the centers for movement are conceptually grouped together in a shorthand term, the “motor brain”; for the activity of the senses, the “sensory brain.” Some “brains” refer to more tightly knit anatomical zones, such as the “reptilian brain,” those lower regions that manage automatic reflexes and the like, which are so ancient in evolution that we share them with reptiles. These heuristic labels are most useful when neuroscientists want to focus on higher-order levels of brain organization, the modules and networks of neurons that orchestrate during a specific function.
Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships Page 37