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From the first article:
Julian Baggini writes,
Most neuroscientists believe we have a dedicated system for social reasoning, quite different to the one that is used for non-social thinking. What’s more, when one system is on, the other turns off. Lieberman explains how the social system fulfils three core tasks. First, it must make connections with others, which involves feeling social pains and pleasures, such as those of rejection or belonging. Second, it must develop mind-reading skills, in order to know what others are thinking, so as to predict their behaviour and act appropriately. Finally, it must use these abilities to harmonise with others, so as to thrive safely in the social world.From the second article:
[Here is excerpt from an NPR interview with Mathew Lieberman]
if I’m being rejected from a group, how do I need to change my behavior or what I say or think in order to not be excluded or rejected from that group? It teaches me lessons about how to behave differently in the future. And because we can imagine the future, we can also use that preemptively. We can feel social pain at the threat of being excluded from a relationship or a group.I do think that this is a very powerful motivator. Go back to Adam Smith. People want to feel high self-regard. But your self-regard depends on how you are regarded by others. Ideally, your tribe wants to nurture and protect you, because they love you and admire you. Worst case, your tribe wants to shun and expel you.
Some thoughts on what I might call the “tribal membership motivator.”
1. It is amazingly powerful. How else to explain fans of college sports or professional sports?
2. Do we need it for social glue? If we lacked this instinct, would we be unable to follow rules? If you only followed social norms when you made a rational calculation about the costs of getting caught cheating vs. the benefits of getting away with it, we probably end up in a world of Prisoners’ Dilemma games in which everyone constantly defects.
3. But the social brain also makes us vulnerable to exploitation. Examples would include men recruited to fight for warlords, individuals pledging loyalty to crime bosses, citizens manipulated by politicians, workers manipulated by bosses, and customers manipulates by salespeople.
4. Lieberman argues that the social brain is important in primates because of the long period in which infants are helpless. We need to be able to form strong connections with parents, or else we would not survive. Note how this circles back to the way in which many institutions try to tap into this primal attraction to parents by stepping into the role of substitute parent: religious organizations, schools, governments, and business hierarchies all exploit this to some degree.
5. Even if markets are effective in some objective sense, they do not provide people with a sense of familial protection and tribal belonging. Perhaps what libertarians need to do is build up the non-governmental substitutes for familial protection and tribal belonging in order to take some of the oxygen away from government. Of course, the other tribe, those evil bastids, is doing the opposite.
Source: Arnold Kling, Social Reasoning, askblog, January 6, 2014 and "Social Reasoning, Continued," January 10, 1014
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