Download Social brain and social resonance

Social brain and communication
Content
Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 1
Social brain and social resonance ............................................................................................................. 1
Social neuroscience ................................................................................................................................... 4
Mindfulness and social brain/relationships .............................................................................................. 6
Kalapa Leadership Academy
[email protected] | www.kalapaacademy.de
Module 6 – Social brain and communication
Introduction
The brain is the social organ of the body.
– Dan Siegel
Social connections are as important to our survival and flourishing as the need for food, safety, and shelter.
We grow up dependent on others, we learn with others, we work with others. This forms our brain on a deep
level and affects our happiness. This point is essential to understanding stress – people forget this – our
survival in the first 18 years of our life is entirely dependent on others – our social environment. So we have
acute sensors for the social state of others, and any child psychologist will tell you we adapt extremely to
people around us to ensure our survival. This is anchored in our brain, and the complexity of our social
interactions is part of what drives the brain’s development.
One of the great mysteries of evolutionary science is how and why the human brain got to be so large. Brain
size generally increases with body size across the animal kingdom, but humans are exceptional. Research has
found that the strongest predictor of a species’ brain size—specifically, the size of its neocortex, the outermost layer—is the size of its social group. We have big brains in order to socialize. Scientists think the first
hominids with brains as large as ours appeared about 600,000-700,000 years ago in Africa. Known as Homo
heidelbergensis, they are believed to be the ancestors of Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals. Revealingly,
they appear to be the first hominids to have had division of labor (they worked together to hunt), central
campsites, and they may have been the first to bury their dead.
Social brain and social resonance
There is no discrete region of the brain which is the “social brain”. Rather many thousands of different
functions are anchored in brain networks, functions that are processing information all the time. For example
the process of facial recognition and recalling emotions or valences in relation to people happens continually,
rapidly and mainly subconsciously – we see someone, recognize their facial features, we categorise them
using comparison to stored memories or feelings, and decide whether we like them or not. Some of these
social functions and processes together form a very important system of social resonance.
Social perception
The brain is very sensitive in picking up social signals, even when we are not aware of this. One study demonstrates this:
In laboratory assessment of how people react to strangers, conducted by Alex Todorov and colleagues at Princeton. 1 They presented subjects with pictures of faces—many faces—that they had
never seen before. All of the faces were intended to have no discernable expression, that is, they wore
neutral expressions. The subjects were asked to rate how trustworthy they thought each face was
based on a gut reaction. Naturally, each subject thought that some of the faces were more trustworthy- looking, some were less trustworthy-looking, and some were neutral. At the same time, the response of each subject’s amygdala— a deep brain structure—was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
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Module 6 – Social brain and communication
The measured responses showed some relationship with judgments the subjects made about the faces. Specifically, the amygdala responses were greatest to faces judged to be the most untrustworthy.
The faces were then ordered in terms of what the group thought. This was a group rule; no one individual who was studied could possibly have known what this rule was. Yet, remarkably, the mean response of the amygdala across all subjects was positively correlated with the mean trustworthy ratings for the group of subjects. This extraordinary finding tells us that there may be fundamental rules
by which our emotional brains process information and generate responses. These responses are initiated without our awareness or permission and they can form the basis of our biases and prejudices.
This finding also fits well with previous data showing that the amygdala reacts to changes in subtle
facial signals such as pupil dilation, and facial expression, even when subjects were not aware that
these signals had occurred.
Face to face with the emotional brain - Ahmad R. Hariri & Paul J. Whalen, The Scientist 2011
This underscores how complex social assessments are functioning in our brain all the time. They are always
affecting us.
Embodied emotions and perceptions
In going deeper into the “social brain” we need to remember one particular view of emotions, namely that
they are always accompanied by bodily sensations, or indeed that emotions can be described as perceptions
of patterned changes in the body. Emotions are always embodied.
In one of the most frequently quoted passages in the history of emotion research, William James (1884: 189f)
stated that emotions occur when the perception of an exciting fact causes a collection of bodily changes, and
“our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.” This so-called “James–Lange Theory” has
remained influential. Its main contribution is the emphasis it places on the embodiment of emotions, especially the argument that changes in the bodily concomitants of emotions can alter their experienced intensity.
Most contemporary neuroscientists would endorse a modified James–Lange view in which bodily feedback
modulates the experience of emotion.
Taking this further, we can see that changing the state of our body, changes our emotions. Some simple
research experiments demonstrate this:
Recent theories of embodied cognition suggest new ways to look at how we process emotional information. The theories suggest that perceiving and thinking about emotion involve perceptual, somatovisceral, and motoric reexperiencing (collectively referred to as “embodiment”) of the relevant
emotion in one’s self. EQUALLY, the embodiment of emotion, when induced in human participants by
manipulations of facial expression and posture in the laboratory, causally affects how emotional information is processed. Congruence between the recipient’s bodily expression of emotion and the
sender’s emotional tone of language, for instance, facilitates comprehension of the communication,
whereas incongruence can impair comprehension. Taken all together, recent findings provide a scientific account of the familiar contention that “when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you.”
Embodying emotion, Niedenthal PM, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2007)
All of these studies show that there is a reciprocal relationship between the bodily expression of emotion and
the way in which emotional information is attended to and interpreted. Research reveals that when individuals adopt emotion-specific postures, they report experiencing the associated emotions; and when individuals adopt facial expressions or make emotional gestures, their preferences and attitudes are influenced; and
finally when individuals’ motor movements are inhibited, interference in the experience of emotion and
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processing of emotional information is observed. The causal relationship between embodying emotions,
feeling emotional states, and acquiring and using information about emotion is currently the subject of a
substantial amount of research in psychology and neuroscience.
Emotional contagion
These processes are also visible in the process of emotional convergence or contagion, another example of
how our social brain works. Emotional contagion is the tendency for two individuals to emotionally converge.
This happens in part through automatic mimicry and synchronization of one's expressions, vocalizations,
postures and movements with those of another person. When people unconsciously mimic expressions of
emotion of others, they come to feel reflections of those peoples emotions. Emotional contagion is important to personal relationships because it fosters emotional synchrony between individuals.
Research regarding the concept of emotional contagion has been conducted from a variety of perspectives,
including organizational, social, familial, developmental, and neurological contexts. While early research
suggested that conscious reasoning, analysis, and imagination accounted for the idea of emotional contagion,
it has been concluded that some forms of more primitive emotional contagion are more subtle, automatic,
and universal. This happens automatically: when a person is interacting with another, he perceives the
emotional expressions of the other. The first person automatically mimics those emotional expressions.
Through the process of afferent feedback, these new expressions are translated into feeling the emotions the
other feels, thus leading to emotional convergence.
People respond differentially to positive and negative stimuli, and negative events tend to elicit stronger and
quicker emotional, behavioral, and cognitive responses than neutral or positive events. Thus, unpleasant
emotions are more likely to lead to mood contagion than are pleasant emotions.
The extent of emotional convergence has been tested in many studies. Peter Totterdell, from the University
of Sheffield in England, says, “If you put two people in a room facing each other, without talking to each
other, their moods will converge, or more likely, the mood of the less expressive person will move towards
the mood of the more expressive person.” And in another experiment, team leaders were shown different
videos designed to put them in certain moods, then told to lead groups in tasks. The group members ended
up in the same moods as the videos that their respective leaders watched, even though the group members
themselves never even watched the videos.
Mechanisms of the social brain – Mirror neurons
A recent discovery in neuroscience is the system of mirror neurons, which help us connect with each other
and is an essential part of the social brain.
A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the
same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though
the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate species. In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex,
the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex and the inferior parietal cortex.
The function of the mirror system is a subject of much speculation. Many researchers in cognitive
neuroscience and cognitive psychology consider that this system provides the physiological mechanism for the perception/action coupling. They argue that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. Some researchers also
speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed actions, and thus contribute to theory of
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mind skills, while others relate mirror neurons to language abilities. Neuroscientists such as Marco
Iacoboni (UCLA) have argued that mirror neuron systems in the human brain help us understand the
actions and intentions of other people. In a study published in March 2005 Iacoboni and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern if another person who was picking up a cup of tea
planned to drink from it or clear it from the table.
Wikipedia – Mirror Neurons
Social neuroscience
This research on the social brain has lead to a burgeoning field of neuroscience called social neuroscience.
Social neuroscience is the study of these social aspects of our brains and minds. In the view of social neuroscience, the brain is the centre of the social self. Its primary purpose is social thinking.
In this view of social neuroscience, also sometimes called interpersonal neurobiology, the brain as part of “an
embodied nervous system, a physical mechanism through which both energy and information flow to influence relationships and the mind.” Thus mind is “an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow
of energy and information, consciousness included. Mind is shared between people. It isn’t something you
own; we are profoundly interconnected. We need to make maps of we because we is what me is!” states Dr
Daniel Siegel of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development Foundation for Psychocultural Research,
UCLA.
Relationships, mind and brain aren’t different domains of reality—they are each about energy and information flow. The mechanism is the brain; subjective impressions and consciousness are mind. The regulation
of energy and information flow is a function of mind as an emergent process emanating from both relationships and brain. Relationships are the way we share this flow. In this view, the emergent process we are
calling “mind” is located in the body (nervous system) and in our relationships. Interpersonal relationships
that are attuned promote the growth of integrative fibers in the brain. It is these regulatory fibers that enable
the embodied brain to function well and for the mind to have a deep sense of coherence and well-being. Such
a state also creates the possibility of a sense of being connected to a larger world. The natural outcome of
integration is compassion, kindness, and resilience.
According to Daniel Siegel, mirror neurons are the antennae that pick up information about the intentions
and feelings of others. It’s how we can be both an ‘I’ and part of an ‘us.’ The prefrontal cortex is the portal
through which interpersonal relations are established. this particular part of the brain is especially important
because it touches all three major parts of our brain: the cortex, limbic area, and brainstem as well as the
body-proper:
“It’s the middle prefrontal fibers which map out the internal states of others. They do this not only
within one brain, mine, but also between two brains, mine and yours, and even among many brains.
The brain is exquisitely social, and emotions are its fundamental language. Through them we become
integrated and develop an emergent resonance with the internal state of the other.”
Now the link becomes clear:

We have acutely sensitive perception of what others are doing and signaling – even unconsciously

Mirror neurons in our brain not only help us see and fire in the same way - automatically. So we are
linked to others in our field of perception, and we experience in our mortor cortex a representation
of what they are experiencing – often unconsciously.
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
So since changes in the body give rise to emotions – as we experience the representation of what
others are doing, we automatically interpret that in terms of feeling and thus feel what others feel.

Feeling what others feel also aligns our perception – our emotional states impact our perception
even of rational objects and numbers.
So clearly we are embedded in a strong field of social resonance. The question is only whether we are conscious of this. The more we have learnt to be sensitive to patterned changes in our own body (and thus our
own emotions) the more we are therefore immediately sensitive to the emotions of others. Mindfulness
plays a crucial role in this.
The social brain and happiness
Research demonstrates how central social aspects are to our happiness. When economists put a price tag on
our relationships, we get a concrete sense of just how valuable our social connections are—and how devastating it is when they are broken. According to Matthew Lieberman, author of Social: Why Our Brains Are
Wired to Connect:

If you volunteer at least once a week, the increase to your happiness is like moving from a yearly income of $20,000 to $75,000.

If you have a friend that you see on most days, it’s like earning $100,000 more each year. Simply seeing your neighbors on a regular basis gets you $60,000 a year more.

On the other hand, when you break a critical social tie—here, in the case of getting divorced—it’s
like suffering a $90,000 per year decrease in your income.
One of Liberman’s provocative studies shows that social loss and rejection are more painful than we might
realize. The researchers put people in a brain scanner and then had them play an Internet video game called
Cyberball where three people toss a ball around to each other. The research subjects were led to believe that
the other people in the game were also part of the study when in fact they were just two pre-programmed
avatars. The point of Cyberball is to make the player (the research subject) feel rejected. At first, all three
players toss the ball to each other in turn. But at a certain point, the avatars cut the poor research participant
out of the game. They toss the ball just to each other. Even though this is a silly game in aresearch study and
has no bearing on real life, the research subjects were really hurt. They started feeling distress. They felt
rejected. When they came out of the scanner, they kept talking to the researchers about how hurt they were.
The most interesting part of the study is how their brains processed the social rejection. To the brain, social
pain feels a lot like physical pain—a broken heart can feel like a broken leg, as Lieberman puts it in his book.
The more rejected the participant said he or she felt, the more activity there was in the part of the brain that
processes the distress of physical pain.
In a follow-up study, participants were called into the lab and, like last time, played Cyberball in the brain
scanner. But this time, there was a twist. Before they came into the lab, half of them had taken Tylenol every
day for three weeks while the other half had taken a placebo. What the researchers found in this study was
remarkable: the placebo group felt just as rejected and pained as those in the initial study, but the people in
the Tylenol group were totally immune to the social pain of feeling left out.
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Mindfulness and social brain/relationships
Mindfulness has a strong impact on our ability to connect to others, feel their moods and emotions, and act
socially intelligently.
Mindfulness and bodily sensation - Numerous studies have shown that mindfulness improves our awareness
of our body and physical sensations. This is part of working with our emotions. So through mindfulness we
become more aware of our own experiences, and thus, through the process of mirror neurons, what others
are feeling.
Mindfulness and emotional regulation - Numerous studies (referred to in other documents) have demonstrated that mindfulness improves emotional regulation. This included awareness of internal states and
bodily sensations and the ability to consciously perceived these. This means that we are also more aware of
others emotional states.
Mindfulness and communication
When we are under pressure, have too many tasks or are irritated because we are sitting in long or unproductive meetings, this can hinder our ability to listen attentively with quiet curiosity and our ability to speak
mindfully. Often in our conversations with colleagues or in other conversations we often think that we already know what the other person will say and in fact before the person has finished speaking we have our
answer ready. Often we become impatient when people talk for too long, cut them short or use mimic and
gestures to try to speed them along.
In all of these examples, we do not really listen, we limit the quality of the exchange, and further an atmosphere of restlessness and lack of appreciation. Mindless speech and distracted listening cause restlessness in
our mind. Many useless words send our minds into a search for our previously stored neuronal speech or
thinking patterns so that by matching these patterns we create a meaning for what is said. The more unnecessary information we get the more we tend to follow old thought patterns to interpret our perceptions and
to the same extent exhaust our minds.
Mindfulness can help directly with a number of aspects of our interactions and communication :

Appreciation - we are all deeply social beings, at work and at all times. Being heard, appreciated and
respect contribute enormously to the atmosphere in a company – especially if this is coming from
the leadership. Even if we do not agree with someone, an atmosphere of mindfulness in conversations has an enormous impact on the general culture at a working place. We have seen how strongly
social resonance works – and communication is an essential aspect of this. So if we are present,
non-judging and appreciative of the other, this has a strong impact on others.

Non distraction – a mindful conversation is a focused on, with no superfluous words and excessive
information. This makes it a precise and to the point, and also energizing rather than draining. People often report being strongly energized after such a mindful conversation.

Felt sense – when we speak with mindfulness we are in contact with our own felt sense, and so can
call on the intelligence of our body and emotions. This can help us significantly distill what we say –
to a precise point which has impact, and based on our insights and real experience rather than just
reflecting thoughts.
Based on our understanding of social resonance and mindfulness, we can see how bringing these together in
mindful communication can be one of the most impactful things we do in our workplace.
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