Colloquium in Nov. 2018
Youm, Yoosik (Professor, Dept. of Sociology at Yonsei Univ.)
This study claims that social interactions could be explained by the interactions between the individuals’ brains, seeing the human brain as one of the main mechanisms to analyze social activities. It has been known that the size of animal brain’s cortex is positively associated with the number of peers to interact with, and that the human beings are a species with the largest brain cortex and social group among the all animals. The study argues that inequalities in social capital could be analyzed by differences in brain activities, based on research on brain activities of about 80 elderly men and women in Ganghwa Island, Korea; the research found close social networks exclusively among those with a high level of cortex activities. Also, in the experiments with the elderly men and women in Ganghwa Island, participants showed a high level of cortex activities when making a choice against their own interests to equally share resources with others. Based on this result, the study points out that longings for equality may be our nature, hardwired in the human brain.
