Using the Social Brain to Promote Learning

Annie Murphy Paul
A recent brain-imaging study showed just how powerfully teenagers are influenced by their peers. That's not necessarily bad news, however: “If your teen’s friends are displaying positive behavior, then it’s fabulous that your teen will see that behavior and be influenced by it,” said study author Lauren Sherman, a researcher at UCLA. Sherman's observation lines up with a favorite idea of mine: “hijacking the social brain to improve educational outcomes,” to borrow a phrase from Dan Ames, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Matthew Lieberman. I wrote about Lieberman’s research in a piece for Scientific American Mind, “Peer Pressure Has a Positive Side.” In the article, I noted that “our schools focus primarily on students as individual entities.” But, I asked, “What would happen if educators instead took advantage of the fact that teens are powerfully compelled to think in social terms?" [READ MORE HERE]