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Chapter 2²

² The lead author is John T. Cacioppo, Ph.D., the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry and the Director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. He is a co-founder (with Gary Berntson) of the field of social neuroscience, a past president of the Association for Psychological Science and a recipient of numerous awards including the National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award and the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. Cacioppo’s research concerns the neural, hormonal, genetic, and behavioral mechanisms underlying the operation and maintenance of the emergent structures that characterize social species generally and humans in particular. He has published more than 400 scientific articles and 16 books, including Loneliness: Human nature and the need for social connection (2008, Norton Books) and Handbook of neuroscience for the behavioral sciences (2009, John Wiley & Sons). Cacioppo is also the Director of the Chicago Social Brain Network.

Cacioppo has been interested both in the similarities and the differences between humans and other species. Human social cognition, emotion, behavior, and executive functioning – that is, our social brain – are especially sophisticated compared to those found in other species. Research in the neurosciences sometimes focuses so much on mechanisms divorced from the social settings and functions they may have evolved to serve in social species such as our own that the generalizations to humans are inaccurate. Animal models permit experimental control and interventions that cannot be carried out in humans, but understanding the implications of this work for the human brain and biology depends on explicit comparison to and knowledge of the rich benefits of human social interaction and feelings of connection. This essay addresses this gap in our thinking about the genetic, neural, and hormonal processes that constitute our brain and body and in doing so provides a different perspective on who we are as a unique biological species.

The Social Nature of Humankind

Social species, by definition, are characterized by the formation of structures (e.g., dyads, families, tribes, cultures) that extend beyond an individual. Although we may revere the rugged individualist, we are fundamentally a social species. I begin by discussing some of the invisible evolutionary forces that led members of our species to band together to form such structures. I then consider how selfish genes (e.g., through anthropomorphism, 1) might have led to social brains and why the social connections and structures created by humans are especially powerful and flexible. Finally, I describe a nonintuitive way of thinking about the absence of satisfactory social connections (i.e., loneliness), mention how and why chronic loneliness can be so harmful, and discuss how our need for social connection motivates us to search for meaning and connections beyond ourselves and other individuals. One implication that is explored here, and in more detail in the essays to follow, is that genetic and cultural adaptations, not human ignorance, may be fueling the search for meaning and connection with a transcendent entity or being.

Mythic Individualism

For at least the past century, we have celebrated the power and intellectual might of the solitary genius. This includes individuals such as Thomas Edison who brought electrical power to individual households, transforming night into day; Henry Ford who introduced the mass production of

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