Why are our brains built in such a way that a broken heart can feel as painful as a broken leg? When someone says, “He broke my heart,” we understand this as a metaphor. No one mistakes this for a medical emergency. Physical and social pain seems as if they are worlds apart. Every time I experience a physical pain, I can point to a place on my body where I am feeling the pain; presumably, there is some kind of disturbance or tissue damage at the spot where the pain is coming from. When I feel social pain, where should I point to?

Social pain Vs Physical Pain

One of the obvious hints that social pain is similar to physical pain is the language we use to talk about social pain. Most of the words we use to describe feelings of social rejection or loss involve the language of physical pain. We say, “She broke my heart,” or “He hurt my feelings,” or that a girlfriend’s leaving “was like being punched in the gut.”

The Language We Use

Newborn monkeys were raised apart from their mothers. Substituting for the mother were two surrogate “monkeys”. One surrogate was a wire-mesh frame that was constructed roughly in the shape of an adult monkey and that provided the milk the newborns needed for survival. The other surrogate was a wooden block that was covered in a layer of sponge rubber, with an outer surface of terry cloth, also roughly in the shape of an adult monkey. This cloth mother provided no milk.

The 1950's Experiment on Monkeys

Which surrogate did the infants became more attached to: the one associated with nourishment or the one that felt a little more like a real mother monkey?  Soon after birth, infant monkeys were spending nearly 18 hours a day in contact with the cloth monkey and almost no time at all with the wire monkey that provided food. These monkeys were attached to the thing that felt most like a real monkey, regardless of the sustenance it provided. Given that all mammals are born incapable of caring for themselves, they all have a similar need to stay connected with a parent or caregiver.

The 1950's Experiment on Monkeys: The Result

A second piece of evidence that social pain is real pain is the separation distress that mammalian infants show when separated from their primary caregivers. Observe the intense and relentless crying and distress that can occur when a mother leaves her child. Each of us is born with an attachment system. We all inherited an attachment system that lasts a lifetime, which means we never get past the pain of social rejection, just as we never get past the pain of hunger.

We Form Attachments

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 alone 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 in much the same way as they do to physical pain and pleasure. Fortunately, the brain has evolved sophisticated mechanisms for securing our place in the social world. We have a unique ability to read other people’s minds, to figure out their hopes, fears, and motivations, allowing us to effectively coordinate our lives with one another. And our most private sense of who we are is intimately linked to the important people and groups in our lives. This wiring often leads us to restrain our selfish impulses for the greater good. These mechanisms lead to behavior that might seem irrational, but is really just the result of our deep social wiring and necessary for our success as a species. Based on the latest cutting edge research, the findings in Social have important real-world implications. Our schools and businesses, for example, attempt to minimalize social distractions. But this is exactly the wrong thing to do to encourage engagement and learning, and literally shuts down the social brain, leaving powerful neuro-cognitive resources untapped. The insights revealed in this pioneering book suggest ways to improve learning in schools, make the workplace more productive, and improve our overall well-being.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

books

Books

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 alone 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 in much the same way as they do to physical pain and pleasure. Fortunately, the brain has evolved sophisticated mechanisms for securing our place in the social world. We have a unique ability to read other people’s minds, to figure out their hopes, fears, and motivations, allowing us to effectively coordinate our lives with one another. And our most private sense of who we are is intimately linked to the important people and groups in our lives. This wiring often leads us to restrain our selfish impulses for the greater good. These mechanisms lead to behavior that might seem irrational, but is really just the result of our deep social wiring and necessary for our success as a species.   Based on the latest cutting edge research, the findings in Social have important real-world implications. Our schools and businesses, for example, attempt to minimalize social distractions. But this is exactly the wrong thing to do to encourage engagement and learning, and literally shuts down the social brain, leaving powerful neuro-cognitive resources untapped. The insights revealed in this pioneering book suggest ways to improve learning in schools, make the workplace more productive, and improve our overall well-being.

Matthew Dylan Lieberman is a Professor and Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab Director at UCLA Department of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences.