52 pages • 1-hour read
Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
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Themes
Emotional Contagion as the Basis of Human Interaction
The theme of emotional contagion is prevalent throughout the text of Social Intelligence. Emotional contagion is the phenomenon in which human emotions “spread” unintentionally from one person to another, just as a virus spreads through person-to-person contact. According to Goleman, emotional contagion factors into almost every aspect of human social experience. From anecdotes about “catching” another person’s fear or anger from only fleeting interactions to the hard science of experiments using MRI to show the emotional centers of the brain unconsciously mirroring the emotions it witnesses, emotional contagion forms the cornerstone of Goleman’s theories about social intelligence.
Emotional contagion can be seen as the driving force behind a wide range of human interaction, as both a source of warmth and a cause of conflict. Within couples, emotional contagion creates rapport and even leads to the partners starting to look alike as they grow old together since their mirror neurons match each other’s expressions and gestures so frequently, shaping their facial muscles accordingly. At the same time, one person’s rancor can spread to their partner just as unconsciously. Couples in bad relationships spread their unhappiness to one another, actually shortening their lifespans and making them more vulnerable to bad health.
Emotional contagion is a factor in any community, from a classroom to a boardroom. When a teacher or a boss is the one displaying anger or contempt, it can cause chronic stress and depression in the people who look to them for leadership.
Emotional contagion is so prevalent and dictates so much of social behavior that any displayed “immunity” to it functions as a point of interest or alarm for social scientists. Emotional contagion usually influences people to avoid upsetting others and even to act altruistically. However, some people show inherent or learned immunity to emotional contagion, which can lead to acts of cruelty. Goleman describes the “dark triad” of socially pathological behavior as arising either from ignorance of other people’s emotions or from deliberate exploitation of them. Narcissism can lead people to bully and browbeat others to make themselves feel superior. Machiavellianism can lead people to exploit emotional contagion to manipulate others into doing their bidding. Psychopathy, the last and possibly most frightening part of the dark triad, means an apparent immunity to emotional contagion, such that people are sometimes oblivious to the emotional experiences of others, able to commit violent and cruel acts without the hesitation or emotional pain that would typically accompany such acts. However, Goleman points out that the “mindblindness” that the psychopath experiences is also experienced by people with autism, who do not commit cruel acts for their own benefit. Instead, Goleman says, people with autism simply do not understand the complex aspects of social cognition and commit gaffes of pure ignorance, not cruelty. An immunity to emotional contagion, though often a cause for alarm, does not always indicate a dangerous individual, often instead indicating neurodiversity, not psychopathy.
The Neurobiology of Relationship Dynamics
Goleman explores the neurobiology of relationship dynamics throughout Social Intelligence. He divides the neural mechanics of social interaction into two complementary systems—the “high road,” which runs through the prefrontal cortex and is characterized by conscious thought and deliberation, and the “low road,” which runs through the amygdala and is characterized by instinctive, unconscious reactions. The amygdala, responsible for lightning-quick emotional responses regarding the threat level of another person or situation, affects relationships through unthinking emotional reactions, often dictated by childhood experiences. Some people, trained from childhood to be anxious, defensive, or withdrawn, battle their amygdala’s reaction in order to relate to others positively. The amygdala and the low road in general can be difficult to retrain, but not impossible. In contrast, the prefrontal cortex, slower than the amygdala but much more sophisticated and adaptable, offers social strategy as a way of relating to others. The high road, responsible for reflection, adaptation, and cognition, allows us to intentionally “retrain” the low roads. However, the high road does not offer the same speed and strength of impetus that, for instance, makes us fling ourselves out of the path of an oncoming car or quickly understand that the rage on a stranger’s face is not momentary but serious and necessitates escape. The human combination of “high” and “low” neurobiology allows us to, at our best and healthiest, engage in uniquely profound social communication: both deeply emotional and strategically intentional.
Goleman provides a wide range of anecdotes that illustrate the neurobiology at work in human interaction. The power of the OFC and its spindle cells allow our high and low roads to communicate in a way that, Goleman posits, is unique to humans. The similarities between animal and human psychology can be instructive, but the neural circuits of the parts of the human brain focused on social interaction are far more complex and powerful than our nearest evolutionary relative, the apes. This ability to socially coalesce and work for the common good allowed human society to flourish in a way unrivaled by any other species on Earth.
This explanation of our neurobiology makes it clear that social interaction is essential to the human experience. Our brains are literally made for socialization, primed in many ways to empathize with others, even from infancy. However, the social aspects of our brains can leave us vulnerable to cruelty or neglect, which affect us on a deep level and even restructure the neural circuits in our brains. When one person cannot “attune” with another, or provide enough attention and warmth to create rapport, the other feels dehumanized, like an “it” instead of a “you.” This dehumanization has real negative effects on our brains and physical bodies. When the neglectful or abusive person is a caregiver or partner, this can profoundly traumatize the person subject to their behavior.
Our neurobiology, primed to respond to the social actions of other humans with powerful emotion and sophisticated cognition, can be a powerful tool for creating a “secure base” for another and allowing them to grow in positive ways through the benefit of warm, attuned rapport. Conversely, it can also make the antisocial actions of other humans an exhausting burden to bear.
The Modern Science of Social Pathology
From the beginning of Social Intelligence, Goleman illustrates the darker, more painful side of humanity’s sophisticated social behavior. His very first anecdote recalls a security guard who yelled at him with a level of aggression that felt wildly out of proportion to his minor, accidental transgression. That moment influenced Goleman for a while afterward, ruining his mood as his “low” road dealt with the emotional response to a perceived threat and his “high” road ruminated over the perplexing behavior of the guard.
While the security guard’s anger was not violent, and perhaps was justified in its proper context, the aggression he showed profoundly affected the people around him. This experience provides a concrete example of the neurobiological processes that, for Goleman, govern social behavior.
Though Goleman points out that the vast majority of human interaction actively avoids cruelty, the fact remains that human cruelty also crucially shapes our understanding of humanity. In this vein, Goleman points to the “dark triad” of antisocial behavior and explains how each part of the triad arises from specific neurobiological causes.
This understanding of negative or antisocial behavior as related to differences in neurobiology represents a profound evolution in our understanding of morality and ethics. In the past, societies turned to religion, philosophy, or superstition to explain bafflingly cruel actions by other humans. The idea of human behavior as inherently flawed ties back to Christian conceptions of human beings as inherently “fallen” or prone to evil impulses. Goleman tells a story from the life of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who took a famously dim view of human nature, describing the default condition of human life as “nasty, brutish, and short” (59). Hobbes is responsible for the philosophical standpoint that most humans need to be kept from doing evil by the force of law, or the “social contract.” However, on at least one occasion, he was observed to behave altruistically toward a beggar, giving him money. When questioned on the seeming contradiction between his philosophy and his actions, he defended himself by saying that the comfort he gave the beggar also comforted him. Hobbes’s point is that his action was in fact more selfish than it appeared since he derived an emotional benefit from it. Goleman takes this anecdote as evidence that Hobbes, like most humans, is neurobiologically wired for empathy and kindness.
By detailing the specific differences in neurobiology that dictate the behavior of narcissists, Machiavellians, and psychopaths, Goleman creates a model of human behavior that sees goodness, like Hobbes’s instinctual kindness, as the norm and evil as deviating from that norm in specific ways. Goleman reinforces this theory in Part 6 of Social Intelligence, where he shows examples of young offenders, already having engaged in cruel acts, as able to use neuroplasticity to “retrain” themselves toward better social behavior. He also shows that deep-seated prejudices can also be retrained through the strategic promotion of empathy. Though some people have inherent differences in their neurobiology that point them toward cruel or abusive acts, Goleman argues that they constitute a minority and that most people who might engage in unthinking cruelty can be retrained toward prosocial behaviors and habits of mind.
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