" Don’t be bullied by people who don’t like holiday movies. They can watch Bruce Willis blow something up in the other room (which is, by the way, a Christmas movie)."
Nice job! This social connection (bonding drive) brings up a question I have about the workplace. I've gathered large amounts of info on good and bad leaders. Good leaders give people a piece of the pie by allowing the to participate in improving the culture and in problem solving. Joining together is like a workplace Christmas movie. (Some workplace processes that do this include WorkOut, Six Sigma, and Check-ins) So what [chemically] goes on inside our brains when we are included in things and part of something? Any studies on this?
Thanks for taking the time to comment and great question!
Short answer – bringing people together can be good, but it is the circumstances and structure that make them feel valued and safe have the big chemical payoff.
Psychology increasingly integrates findings from neuroscience to make sense of human behavior. Social interaction is believed by many to be the driver of human brain evolution, critical for health, and underlies phenomena such as childhood development as well as being integral to physical and emotional health. The social neuroscience promotion of the concept of the "social brain" is pretty widely accepted. , but neuroscientific studies are limited by the many questions to be asked, the small n’s given the complexity and $ of getting people into fMRI machines. Specifics, like which part of the brain is related to social representation is harder to apply than a general understanding of evolutionary responses which we attribute to the brain since they aren't conscious. However, that doesn’t stop us from extrapolating what we know about how people react to validation and inclusion, the tendency to internalize group identity and collective agency (for better or worse) moderating by culture and individual differences such as introversion, and extroversion or processing speed.
From an applied perspective, you might find David Rock’s SCARF model interesting if you haven’t run across it (status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness) because it represents the five areas of social needs that make the brain feel safe in social interactions. When met, they trigger a reward response and when not, interactions can activate the instinctive threat or fear response. The key to successful group experiences is more than just putting people into a room, but, as you describe, providing the opportunities to feel valued and agentic to maximize safety and reward. There is a brief summary from 2018 here: http://lpcazure.laspositascollege.edu/gv/pdc/assets/docs/mandatoryflex/archives/fall2018/WTArticle.pdf.
From a more philosophical and social psychological angle, there has been a revival of work looking at group experiences based on Durkheim’s concept of ritual and collective effervescence, examining positive emotions from shared social identity, self-transcendent emotions such as ‘awe’ and ‘kama muta’ (a Sanskrit term coming from anthropology) that are examining the impact of collective and community experiences on emotion, belonging, and well-being and transformative experiences (see Yukdin below). Kama muta is an intriguing concept because it links emotional experience to its physical properties (like goosebumps.) I actually have a paper “in publication” (that purgatory where academic research sits until the data is almost too old to be useful while it waits to be reviewed and published) that uses kama muta to conceptualize and operationalize the experience of belonging virtual exercise.
The full text of these is online.
Pizarro JJ, Zumeta LN, Bouchat P, Włodarczyk A, Rimé B, Basabe N, et al. Emotional processes, collective behavior, and social movements: A meta-analytic review of collective effervescence outcomes during collective gatherings and demonstrations. Frontiers in Psychology. 2022;13.
I saw SCARF when it first came out and was so excited I flew to UCLA to meet with Mathew Lieberman and Naomi Eichleberger (sp?) about "social pain" in the workplace. Needless to say, the bottom 25% of bosses inflict this pain (and stress) on employees . But I never thought about the reverse—that if all those positive SCARF elements are met in the workplace, positive chemicals are generated. I'll start looking for proof/linkages for that! Thanks again.
That's so cool that you met Lieberman and Eisenberger. I loved Lieberman's book "Social". I'll keep my eyes open for research for you. A corollary is Barbara Fredrickson's Broaden and Build theory that says positive emotions are cumulative and create an upward spiral that broadens the thought-action repertoire. Her 2008 paper that inspired a lot of people (including me) is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693418/pdf/15347528.pdf
This Fredrickson article is great stuff. I'd like to tell you about a pilot program I'm running at State Dept that seems to prove this case. (I'm an old friend of John's and on LinkedIn as Mike Mears, Leadership Theoretician.)
105 points, the extra 5 for this"
" Don’t be bullied by people who don’t like holiday movies. They can watch Bruce Willis blow something up in the other room (which is, by the way, a Christmas movie)."
"
Thanks for your positive support Malcolm, and always appreciate the extra points.
Nice job! This social connection (bonding drive) brings up a question I have about the workplace. I've gathered large amounts of info on good and bad leaders. Good leaders give people a piece of the pie by allowing the to participate in improving the culture and in problem solving. Joining together is like a workplace Christmas movie. (Some workplace processes that do this include WorkOut, Six Sigma, and Check-ins) So what [chemically] goes on inside our brains when we are included in things and part of something? Any studies on this?
Hi Mike,
Thanks for taking the time to comment and great question!
Short answer – bringing people together can be good, but it is the circumstances and structure that make them feel valued and safe have the big chemical payoff.
Psychology increasingly integrates findings from neuroscience to make sense of human behavior. Social interaction is believed by many to be the driver of human brain evolution, critical for health, and underlies phenomena such as childhood development as well as being integral to physical and emotional health. The social neuroscience promotion of the concept of the "social brain" is pretty widely accepted. , but neuroscientific studies are limited by the many questions to be asked, the small n’s given the complexity and $ of getting people into fMRI machines. Specifics, like which part of the brain is related to social representation is harder to apply than a general understanding of evolutionary responses which we attribute to the brain since they aren't conscious. However, that doesn’t stop us from extrapolating what we know about how people react to validation and inclusion, the tendency to internalize group identity and collective agency (for better or worse) moderating by culture and individual differences such as introversion, and extroversion or processing speed.
From an applied perspective, you might find David Rock’s SCARF model interesting if you haven’t run across it (status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness) because it represents the five areas of social needs that make the brain feel safe in social interactions. When met, they trigger a reward response and when not, interactions can activate the instinctive threat or fear response. The key to successful group experiences is more than just putting people into a room, but, as you describe, providing the opportunities to feel valued and agentic to maximize safety and reward. There is a brief summary from 2018 here: http://lpcazure.laspositascollege.edu/gv/pdc/assets/docs/mandatoryflex/archives/fall2018/WTArticle.pdf.
From a more philosophical and social psychological angle, there has been a revival of work looking at group experiences based on Durkheim’s concept of ritual and collective effervescence, examining positive emotions from shared social identity, self-transcendent emotions such as ‘awe’ and ‘kama muta’ (a Sanskrit term coming from anthropology) that are examining the impact of collective and community experiences on emotion, belonging, and well-being and transformative experiences (see Yukdin below). Kama muta is an intriguing concept because it links emotional experience to its physical properties (like goosebumps.) I actually have a paper “in publication” (that purgatory where academic research sits until the data is almost too old to be useful while it waits to be reviewed and published) that uses kama muta to conceptualize and operationalize the experience of belonging virtual exercise.
The full text of these is online.
Pizarro JJ, Zumeta LN, Bouchat P, Włodarczyk A, Rimé B, Basabe N, et al. Emotional processes, collective behavior, and social movements: A meta-analytic review of collective effervescence outcomes during collective gatherings and demonstrations. Frontiers in Psychology. 2022;13.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.974683/full
Yudkin, D.A., Prosser, A.M.B., Heller, S.M. et al. Prosocial correlates of transformative experiences at secular multi-day mass gatherings. Nat Commun 13, 2600 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29600-1
Thank you, Dr. Pam! Wonderful.
I saw SCARF when it first came out and was so excited I flew to UCLA to meet with Mathew Lieberman and Naomi Eichleberger (sp?) about "social pain" in the workplace. Needless to say, the bottom 25% of bosses inflict this pain (and stress) on employees . But I never thought about the reverse—that if all those positive SCARF elements are met in the workplace, positive chemicals are generated. I'll start looking for proof/linkages for that! Thanks again.
That's so cool that you met Lieberman and Eisenberger. I loved Lieberman's book "Social". I'll keep my eyes open for research for you. A corollary is Barbara Fredrickson's Broaden and Build theory that says positive emotions are cumulative and create an upward spiral that broadens the thought-action repertoire. Her 2008 paper that inspired a lot of people (including me) is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693418/pdf/15347528.pdf
This Fredrickson article is great stuff. I'd like to tell you about a pilot program I'm running at State Dept that seems to prove this case. (I'm an old friend of John's and on LinkedIn as Mike Mears, Leadership Theoretician.)
Of course I remember you! Love to hear about your project.