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.
Read the whole essay, which reviews three books on social psychology and philosophy.
I had not heard about this dichotomy between social reasoning and non-social thinking. Where can I find out more? One possibility that leaps to my mind: in thinking about politics, do progressives and conservatives have social reasoning turned on and non-social thinking turned off, but with libertarians it is the other way around?
One of the books reviewed in the essay, Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes, looks like something that could relate to my Three Languages of Politics. However, I get the impression is that degenerates into a plea for the author’s version of utilitarianism.
I haven’t read Greene’s book (though I plan to), but anyone interested in his thoughts can read a précis of them in the article “Deep Pragmatism” he did for Edge.org. You could agree with his diagnosis without necessarily agreeing with his prescription.
Re “social reasoning” vs. “non-social reasoning”, it’s not clear to me how much this differs from “system 1” vs. “system 2” thinking as discussed by Kahneman and others. Lieberman wrote a 20-page article “Social Cognitive Neuroscience: A Review of Core Processes” (Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2007. 58:259–89) that I found online; it appears to discuss the same topics as his popular book treatment. The paper includes a table contrasting “X-System” vs. “C-System” mental processes; it is very reminiscent of the “System 1” vs. “System 2” table in the “dual process theory” Wikipedia article.
Finally, on libertarians and non-social reasoning, recall that Ravi Iyer, Jonathan Haidt, and others did a study on libertarians as “systemizers” a couple of years ago (“Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Roots of an Individualist Ideology”).
“Where can I find out more?”
Try some of the work by Michael S. Gazzaniga, for example his “Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain”.
Your “Three Languages of Politics” book was the focus of a presentation given at this conference last October:
http://www.campaigntechconference.com
I looked up from my laptop when I heard it mentioned. Good stuff, good fun.
Maybe libertarians don’t view systems and institutions as if they were anthropomorphic. For example conservatives have a lot of empathy for cops and can’t see the system that is at fault for too many volatile citizen contacts. They choose not to empathize with the civilians because they are an other. Maybe the polarization comes first.
“Maybe libertarians don’t view systems and institutions as if they were anthropomorphic.” I’m not sure in exactly what sense you mean this. Looking from inside the state out, there is certainly the tendency of those on the inside to see themselves as “real people” (perhaps the only “real people”) and everyone else as “civilians”. However I think the idea that “conservatives have a lot of empathy for cops” could also be explained by Jonathan Haidt’s idea that conservatives rank higher than progressives and libertarians in respect for authority: It’s not that conservatives have more empathy for the police as human beings (or at least it’s not just that), it’s that conservatives are more likely to display an automatic deference to those who wield authority, independent of whatever qualities they might have as human beings.
If this is the case, then in more authoritarian societies we would expect the police to display less of their human features and more of the symbols of authority (badge, uniform, etc.). And indeed this is the case both in real life (think riot helmets) and in fiction (think: Imperial stormtroopers, Judge Dredd, etc.). For an ordinary person (not in authority) to obscure their human features in such a society then becomes an act of subversion and rebellion (think: V for Vendetta).