Sublime

Of the many emerging descriptions of our social brain, for me the simplest and most elegant is the highly regarded Social Baseline Theory of Lane Beckes and James A. Coan, two researchers at the University of Virginia.

is that a deeper sense of belonging and “connection to a larger humanity gives people more freedom to express their individuality without fear of jeopardizing belonging.”

Our deepest reserves of resilience come from knowing that other people are counting on us.

Roy Baumeister, a world-renowned social psychologist, wrote similarly about the need to belong—about our fundamental and innate need to form interpersonal relationships, to maintain social bonds, to be part of a shared community.

When a core belief is questioned, though, we tend to shut down rather than open up. It’s as if there’s a miniature dictator living inside our heads,8 controlling the flow of facts to our minds, much like Kim Jong-un controls the press in North Korea. The technical term for this in psychology is the totalitarian ego, and its job is to keep out threa

we each have identities we claim. We look to others to grant those identities. When we don’t get that affirmation, we feel threatened, which is stressful, and we do things we would not normally do. Under self-threat, we become less of the good people we mean to be.