Some highlights from David Brooks' The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011), which catalogs recent research in neuroscience and psychology
- Snap impressions are powerful. A Princeton professor "gave his subjects microsecond glimpses of the faces of competing politicians. His research subjects could predict, with 70 percent accuracy, who would win the election between two candidates." (p. 9)
- Culture counts. He describes "a famous experiment in which [a researcher] showed pictures of a fish tank to Americans and Japanese, and asked them to describe what they saw. In case after case, the Americans described the biggest and most prominent fish in the tank. The Japanese made 60 percent more references to the context and background elements of the scene, like the water, rocks, bubbles, and plants in the tank." (p. 141)
- Humans instinctively self-segregate. "The anterior cingulated cortices in Caucasian and Chinese brains activate when they see members of their own group endure pain; but much less than when they see members of another group enduring it." (p. 287)
- Older can indeed mean wiser. "John Gabrieli of MIT has found that in older people's brains the amygdala remains active when people are viewing positive images but is not active when people are viewing negative images. They've unconsciously learned the power of positive perception." (p. 340)
- We are equipped for transcendence. "Andrew Newberg found that when Tibetan monks or Catholic nuns enter a period of deep meditation or prayer, their parietal lobes, the region of the brain that helps define the boundaries of our bodies, becomes less active. They experience a sensation of infinite space." (p. 345)
