# The social brain explained

- **Episode:** [116](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/116.md) (2024-07-20)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** social-brain, neuroscience, workplace-psychology
- **Time:** 14:21–19:53 (start 861s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/116?t=861](https://truthliesandwork.com/116?t=861)

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[14:21] Al Elliott: You've got a term in the book that I'd never come across, and it was called the social brain. Can you just explain what that is to someone who's not an expert?
[14:28] Hilary Scarlet: Well, there are lots of neuroscientists who I learn from who, in terms of the social brain, and I think part of this is about we are deeply, deeply social creatures, more than I think we realize. And I think this is particularly important at work because I think on the whole, we get it in our personal lives that relationships matter, and on When relationships are good, life is pretty good. But I do think historically in organizations, we've kind of expected employees to walk through the workplace door or turn Teams or Zoom on in the morning, whatever it might be, and that we're professionals. So relationships shouldn't matter to us in quite the same way, but they do. We are deeply social creatures, and there's lots of really interesting research from the world of psychology and neuroscience about just how social we are and various reasons Why? One of the reasons is we, as humans, we start out as babies, and as mammals, we wouldn't make it through our first years, months and years of life without somebody looking out for us, looking after us. So, babies will scream and cry when they're tired, when they're hungry, but also when they're separated from their caregiver, because babies absolutely know, is somebody interested in me? If they are, I'm okay. If not, I'm not okay. And I think that kind of carries on in us throughout life, less overtly, but at work, you know, is my manager interested in me? If they are, I'm okay
[15:46] Al Elliott: Yeah
[15:48] Hilary Scarlet: If not, I'm not okay. So I think it's partly that. I think also, again, because in many ways our brains kind of still think they're out on the savanna. In many ways, that's what they're better adapted to. It's kind of where they think they still are in many ways. And again, if you're out on the savanna, if you're part of a tribe, you're much more likely to make it. You're much more likely to survive. And survival is the key goal for the brain. So if the tribe throws you out, That's a threat to your survival. So again, we are constantly checking out subconsciously, do I fit in? Do I belong? Do I feel part of the team or not? If I am, that's a positive. If not, that's a threat to my survival. So there's various reasons why our brains are deeply social. And I think one of the most remarkable findings, I think, from the world of neuroscience is that although we think of social pain and physical pain as being quite distinct. Our brains don't differentiate in quite the same way. It's pretty much the same parts of the brain that process physical pain and social pain because both matter in terms of survival. And that's to the extent one of the most remarkable pieces of research is paracetamol that we would take for our headaches also has been shown to reduce social pain. So social pain is that real to the brain. There's nothing soft about it. And, and there's lots of research from the world of psychology about showing just the impact of feeling socially rejected in some way, the impact on our ability to think, our staying power, our resilience, our levels of lethargy, those kind of things. So fMRI is what, what we often use in, in neuroscience. Um, and, um, yeah, there's Matt Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberg, amongst other, other neuroscientists, have done research where people are in a scanner, in an fMRI scanner and they're playing this kind of— it was quite boring— cyberball. You think you're throwing a ball to 2 other people and they're throwing it back to you. And then in the experiment, suddenly the 2 other players stop throwing you the ball. You don't get it again for the rest of the game. These 2 are just playing with each other and ignoring you. And what they can see in people's brains when that happens is the social pain, the pain network in the brain is activated, particularly amongst those people who care So we all care a bit, but some people care more than others if they're excluded from that game. So absolutely, you can see in brain scans that when people are socially excluded, that the pain network is activated in the brain. There's kind of 2 networks in the brain that are anti-correlated. When one is on, the other is off. When one is on, we tend to be more in social mode, people mode. When the other is on, we tend to be more in task mode. And we say when one is on, the other is off. And as with all things with the brain, the more you practice one, the better you get at that. And research suggests that a lot of us at work are in task mode. So it's those parts of the brain that get developed more at the expense of the social network in the brain. And to be a really good leader, all of us, what you want to be, you want both networks to be activated when you can, and to be very flexible between the two. That's the key thing, is about to switch quickly between the two. So I think that just brings home to, if we get too much into task mode at work, which I think probably a lot of us do, we're not developing the social network as much. I mean, all the research from the world of neuroscience and other areas too is about— is what we want for people to be at work is engaged and curious about work and what we're doing, and that is much more associated with what's called the reward network in the brain. So being told what to do, being given orders, micromanaged, just turns off the reward network in the brain. So you're absolutely right, all the work from the world of neuroscience would suggest that you want to engage with people, and lots of little things activate the reward network, just being listened to really well, things like that, simple things that we can all do, and it's those kind of things that help people perform better at work rather than, yeah, task mode, being told what to do