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Study Shows Brain Responds More To Close Friends
An anonymous reader writes "People's brains are more responsive to friends than to strangers, even if the stranger has more in common, according to a study in the Oct. 13 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers examined a brain region known to be involved in processing social information, and the results suggest that social alliances outweigh shared interests. In a study led by graduate student Fenna Krienen and senior author Randy Buckner, PhD, of Harvard University, researchers investigated how the medial prefrontal cortex and associated brain regions signal someone's value in a social situation. Previous work has shown that perceptions of others' beliefs guide social interactions. Krienen and her colleagues wondered whether these brain regions respond more to those we know, or to those with whom we share similar interests."
And even more to rivals and enemies
The subject of this research is baffling to me.
Surely all your friends were once strangers, yes?
What definition of "friend" are these scientists using? It sounds like they're asking me to pick a few people whom I'm likely to respond to, then some people I've never heard of. Perhaps they should spend more time outside the lab themselves?
How do I know if I really share any interests with someone if I've never met them? Because they say so? "I like long walks on the beach..."
And speaking as someone whose interests include stuff like comic books and horror movies, it is almost never safe to assume you could be friends with someone based on those kinds of attributes. (Too many weirdos.)
Who is surprised by their results?
Breakfast served all day!
> Who is surprised by their results?
Response based on shared attributes: No, who's on first.
Response based on shared attributes: Who is not surprised; he is in his TARDIS, and "Who" isn't really his name.
Response based on friendship: anrvsdfnlawecs'dfk
All strangers were friends once, but a friend is more likely to respond to an anrvsdfnlawecs'dfk. This is also one reason social networking is important: our brains are coded to care more about people who have networked with us socially than about people who happen to have a shared interest, at least when it comes to paying attention to them in the first place.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I'm actually a bit more inclined to know if they recorded the gender with their results.
See, if I were to assume that what they consider "brain response" to correlate to social interaction; than there is of course the obvious "You're going to talk to your friends more than people you don't know." Which can often be a barrier.
However, I've noticed one thing amongst men that seems to differ from women: a lot of guys tend to hang out with other guys who have the same interests. The guys who are into sports tend to be friends with other guys who are into sports. The guys into comics are friends with other comic lovers. Now you'd think this would be a natural progression for just about everyone: You are friends with the people who have similar interests.
But specifically in my girlfriend's scenario, she doesn't have a lot of similarities with even her closest friends. One of her friends has gotten so "Witchy" recently that everyone is starting to hate her. I posed the question one day, "If you don't like hanging out with her, why do you?" To which she paused, and hesitantly responded, "Because she's my friend. I've known her since like grade 1, I can't just cut that off." Which absolutely baffles me. I'm not saying she needs to burn any bridges, but I definately take a more active approach in choosing my friends. I have evaluated each of my friends for the qualities I admire and actively make plans with the ones I enjoy the most.
Is that just me, or is it a gender based thing, or is this completely anecdotal and not worth the bandwidth used when posting it?
I only bring up genders because you'll notice a lot more "Drama" seems to happen amongst women, which I think is because of the shakey foundations of their friendships, which always seem to be based on time they had spent together (or familiarity) as opposed to actual social interests. Keep in mind I'm generalizing things a lot, clearly not everyone is like this.
Scientists (I am one) will often carry out research on what seems to the layperson as "obvious". Contrary to the opinions of such laypersons, such basic research are not a waste of taxpayer's money. Before you can get to the "useful" applied research, years of basic research man-hours needed to be done in the background until enough data had accumulated. These scientists, are looking at the brain signals associated with the phenomenon that they are studying. Their findings would add more information to our understanding of the human brain, mind, individuality and society. Only those with a mistaken understanding of how scientific research works would narrowly look at similar research like this and think that it is not very useful.
I had a female friend in high school like that. She'd come right out and give you permission to BRIEFLY stare at them, because she said she understood what kind of challenge it presented to some people. So you got ten seconds to look at them, an opportunity to make a (tasteful) comment about her beauty, and then you could start the actual conversation. It actually seemed to help some people focus.
The term is "propinquity", the tendency of people to form closer friendships with those they encounter often. For example, in college, people who are assigned room near stairwells tend to end up with more friends than those whose rooms aren't in a major traffic pattern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity
I often encounter other foreigners who complain about how Vietnamese try to cheat them, tell them ridiculous prices, etc. Me, I had exactly the opposite experience. One of the reasons was that I took the time to read about their culture before I came here. And one aspect of their culture is that social relations are far more important than anything else. It doesn't matter who you are, how much you are willing to spend, etc. Once I was buying a pack of cigarettes from a street vendor, when I noticed a coin just under my motorbike. It may have fallen out of my pocket, or not... I didn't care, I gave it to the vendor. She was protesting, but I smiled, patted her on the shoulder, and drove away. Two weeks later, I bought another pack from the same vendor. She kept the coin and gave it to me, trying to explain something enthusiastically. I speak a little Vietnamese, but couldn't understand her.
I know this is common sense, and we all know that if we befriend a shopkeeper or an official, he or she will treat us better - but it is far more prevalent in Vietnam than in our cultures. So I usually start any interaction by talking, telling them my name, age, marital status (those will be the first question you encounter) and making them laugh. They are a fun loving people, make them laugh, and you won't have to pay more than the locals.
Expacts complaining about them usually approach vendors expecting to be cheated. Vietnamese have a very keen sense of your attitude, enhanced by the language barrier (they have to rely more on their instinct when you don't speak their language). They are very good at reading people. Approach them with an open heart, and they will like you. If they like you, you pay local prices. Simple as that. Pretending to like them, fake smiles don't really work. When I share my views with these complaining expacts, they usually say I'm just naive, and I'm being cheated without even knowing it. Funny, considering I've been here for over two years, have lots of Vietnamese friends, and know the local prices of almost everything. Plus I understand enough Vietnamese to know how much they asked their countrymen to pay for a given item.
Point is that here, it is far more important to establish some sort of relationship before conducting any business. That includes very personal questions, like your age, marital status, etc. Of course, age is also important because they don't have a generic "you" in their language. You can't say "you" in Vietnamese. If someone's younger than you, you is "em", same age will be "anh" for men and "chi" for women, "ong" and "co" respectively for men and women who could be your mother. There are a dozen more commonly used personal pronouns for you, depending on position in the family, your age, your gender, and your social status. So I'd say that the findings in this study can be important to understand not only our own cultures, but other cultures too. It also shows an aspect of general human nature that in many western cultures became more buried under formalities.