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Neuroscience Proves We Need Each Other
Neuroscience continues to broaden our understanding of how communications actually works, and to shift our received wisdom. Two studies that I caught up with recently, one from this year and the other from about eight years ago, confirm that we humans are both more optimistic and more flexible than we might think.
The older study needs to be redone post-pandemic to see if we are still as optimistic as we were before it started, but I suspect Covid didn’t change attitudes much at the scale the study was conducted. The research tested billions of words in ten languages and found that we use, on average, more positive language than negative. Humans, on the whole, are optimistic! And since we are talking billions of words, many different kinds of texts from music lyrics to Chinese novels, and ten languages, it would take a lot to shift that particular set of results.
It’s encouraging to learn that we humans talk positively on the whole, even if I’m not sure exactly what that means. Does it mean that we are optimistic, or that we talk a good game to cheer ourselves up — or to encourage others? It’s not clear, though given the huge amount of data, it’s probably a reflection of our existing mental states rather than of a broad-based conspiracy to fool someone else.
