Social: Why our brains are wired to connect - Hardcover

This isn't just fascinating for its own sake. Lieberman has a social and political purpose. (Julian Baggini, Financial Times)

This is a compelling and thought-provoking book. (Grrl Scientist)

Lieberman animates our grey matter as a frenziedly active kernel looking for ways to synchronize our reflexes with others. (Amelia Walsh, The Observer)

Matthew Liberman's book is good: it reads well, the structure is helpful and linear for the general-interest reader while also offering some depth for the detail-oriented bookworm or specialist. (Tristan Bekinschtein, Times Higher Education)

SOCIAL is the book I've been waiting for: a brilliant and beautiful exploration of how and why we are wired together, by one of the field's most prescient pioneers. (Daniel Gilbert, professor, Harvard University, bestselling author of Stumbling On Happiness)

This fascinating, beautifully written book brings the exciting research on our social nature and the brain to life (Shelley Taylor, distinguished professor, UCLA, author of The Tending Instinct)

Why are we influenced by the behaviour of complete strangers? Why does the brain register similar pleasure when I perceive something as 'fair' or when I eat chocolate? Why can we be so profoundly hurt by bereavement? What are the evolutionary benefits of these traits? The young discipline of 'social cognitive neuroscience' has been exploring this fascinating interface between brain science and human behaviour since the late 1990s.

Now one of its founding pioneers, Matthew D. Lieberman, presents the discoveries that he and fellow researchers have made. Using fMRI scanning and a range of other techniques, they have been able to see that the brain responds to social pain and pleasure the same way as physical pain and pleasure; and that unbeknown to ourselves, we are constantly 'mindreading' other people so that we can fit in with them. It is clear that our brains are designed to respond to and be influenced by others. For good evolutionary reasons, he argues, we are wired to be social.

The implications are numerous and profound. Do we have to rethink what we understand by identity, and free will? How can managers improve the way their teams relate and perform? Could we organize large social institutions in ways that would work far better? And could there be whole new methods of education?