27. Sticks and stones break bones

Hi friends,

Welcome to the twenty-seventh dispatch of How Humans Flourish, a research-informed newsletter on how humans thrive.

For the month of July, we’re reading Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by neurologist Dr. Matthew Lieberman, Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab Director at UCLA.

Dr. Lieberman and his colleagues have spent the last 20 years researching social cognitive neuroscience, the science of how our brains respond to the social world. Using tools like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), their discoveries explain how our brains are wired to connect with each other.

There are three brain regions that work together to create three very specific social adaptations. The adaptations are:

1. Connection, the ability to experience social pains and pleasures. 

2. Mindreading, the ability to comprehend and perceive the actions and thoughts of others.

3. Harmonizing, the neural adaptations that allow group beliefs and values to mold our own.

When it comes to connection, Dr. Lieberman offers us two incredible discoveries through his research:

1. The same regions in the brain that are activated when we experience physical pain, are the very same regions activated when we experience social pain. Social pain encompasses bullying like ostracism, exclusion, or rejection; loss like the death of a loved one or a recent romantic breakup; and negative evaluation like critical feedback or a disapproving look.

Social pain and pleasure is an interesting phrase because “from a young age, we teach children to say, ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’ But this isn’t true. Bullying hurts so much not because one individual is rejecting us but because we tend to believe that the bully speaks for others…Absence of support is taken as a sign of mass rejection.”  (Lieberman, pg. 69 - Kindle)

Bullying is probably the most pervasive form of social rejection we have. While it can involve physical aggression, more than 85 percent of bullying events do not…they involve belittling comments or spreading rumors. Studies from around the world, including the United States, England, Germany, Finland, Japan, South Korea, and Chile, show teenage victims of bullying are seven times more likely than other children to report being depressed. They think about committing suicide more, and they are four times as likely as others to make a suicide attempt. 

2. Humans are both altruistic and selfish, and our values, biology, and disposition towards agreeableness determine which lever is pulled at any given moment. And yet, regardless of where we fall on the martyrdom/self-interested continuum, a fundamental part of the human experience is expecting fair treatment. In fact, fairness is so expected, our brain’s reward system is sensitive to it and “the same brain regions that are associated with loving the taste of chocolate or any other physical pleasures respond to being treated fairly as well.” (Lieberman, pg. 79 - Kindle)

While we are incredibly sensitive to this treatment, our biology doesn’t necessarily help us treat others fairly. “In animals, prosocial sentiments toward one’s offspring have been associated with higher levels of oxytocin modulating reward responses…In nonprimates, increased oxytocin is associated with increased aggression toward strangers. This is generally understood in terms of mothers’ protecting their infants from unknown threats…This ensures that the mother’s limited resources are spent only on those offspring that will pass on her genes to future generations. 

Both the caring- and aggression-related effects of oxytocin have been demonstrated in humans as well. Administering oxytocin has been shown to increase generosity when people play behavioral economics games like the Prisoner’s Dilemma. On the flip side, psychologist Carsten De Dreu in the Netherlands has demonstrated in multiple studies that administering oxytocin leads to more aggressive responses to members of other ethnic groups in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. 

While oxytocin can promote ingroup favoritism (that is, toward groups that one is a part of) and hostility toward those who are not part of one’s ingroup, the dividing line between friend or foe differs in a crucial way between primates and other mammals. In nonprimates, oxytocin leads individuals to see all outsiders as possible threats, thus enhancing aggression toward them. In contrast, humans divide others into at least three categories: members of liked groups, members of disliked groups, and strangers whose group affiliations are unknown. 

Administering oxytocin in humans facilitates caregiving toward both liked group members and strangers, but it promotes hostility toward members of disliked groups.” (Lieberman, pg. 95 - Kindle)

This lens provides a very different framework for analyzing the world and its many and varied conflicts. 

Last week, I wrote about a new friend of mine, Dr. Jean Bosco Niyonzima, who has spent the last few decades developing a community-based social healing intervention in countries that have suffered devastating upheaval (i.e. South Sudan, Rwanda, etc.). In a sense, you could say a major part of his work involves getting people to redefine the categories they place others in. 

Dr. Renee Linklater, Director of Shkaabe Makwa at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, would argue the science warrants taking community-focused, Indigenous paradigms of mental health like Dr. Niyonzima’s more seriously. 

In her book, Decolonizing Trauma Work, she describes Indigenous paradigms of health as “focused on restoring balance to the self through relationship with others and the environment.”

What does this mean in practical terms?

We’ll explore more next week.

With gratitude,