During the last decade, much of social neuroscience has gone anti-solipsistic. That is, research is discovering how we, with our minds and bodies, are deeply connected to others, and that this may be seen in patterns of brain activity and other physiological signals. Be that in terms of action representations, markers of empathy, signs of …
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Interdisciplinary Panel & Small Groups
This panel aims to foster greater interdisciplinary dialogue by highlighting the subtleties, challenges, and opportunities involved in working across disciplines. Faculty representing diverse academic perspectives will give a brief overview of their discipline, including discussion of the central questions and approaches used in each, and how these come into play in contemplative studies. There will …
2017 Summer Research Institute
The 2017 Mind & Life Summer Research Institute gives attention to scientific, humanistic and first-person contemplative perspectives on intersubjectivity and social connectivity. Plenary presentations, workshops and small group discussions explore interrelational human dynamics, including how we relate to ourselves and others, and to community and strangers. Faculty from across a multitude of disciplines present research findings on the meditative cultivation of pro-social emotions, intergroup dynamics, social and embodied cognition, cognitive ecology, implicit bias and social justice.
Love and Enaction: Towards an Engaged Epistemology
How do we understand life and mind? For Kym Maclaren, understanding something means “letting it be.” We understand something only to the extent that we do not fully determine it. Understanding something wrongly can do an injustice to it. Imagine a horse trainer only interested in the moneymaking his animal can do; it will collapse …
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STEMing the Tide: How Female Experts and Peers Foster Social Connections and Serve as “Social Vaccines” to Protect Young Women’s Self-Concept in STEM
Individuals’ choice to pursue one academic or professional path over another may feel like a free choice but it is often constrained by subtle cues in achievement environments that signal who naturally belong there and who don’t. What factors release these constraints and enhance individuals’ real freedom to pursue academic and professional paths despite stereotypes …
Plasticity of the Social Brain: Effects of a One-year Mental Training Study on Social Connectedness, Compassion, Theory of Mind, Social Stress, and the Body
In the last decades, plasticity research has suggested that training of mental capacities such as attention, mindfulness and compassion is effective and leads to positive changes in socio-affective and cognitive functions. Tania Singer will show first results of the ReSource Project, a large-scale multi-methodological one-year secular mental training program in which participants were trained in …
Interdisciplinary Panel Social Networks: Intersubjectivity, Connectivity and Technology
This panel will examine the growing role of social media and handheld technology uses in various relationships, individual and group health, intergroup dynamics, and its effects on prosocial behavior. Panelists will discuss the opportunities, misbeliefs and dangers of increased connectedness through technology, with reflections on current research findings and will raise important questions for future …
Advancing Prosocial Interactions on Facebook Through Interdisciplinary Research
Pete Fleming has built a multidisciplinary research team at Facebook, responsible for studying social interactions and developing products to make Facebook a safer and more supportive space for people to connect with others. The team is made up of researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including social psychology, clinical psychology, human-computer interaction, sociology, demography, …
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The Other as Part of the Self: Empathy, Understanding and Support
High-quality social relationships help us live longer, happier and healthier lives — facts that hold true, as far as anyone knows, regardless of geography or culture. Although links between relationships and health have been observed for decades (if not millennia), the mechanisms responsible for them remain speculative. In this talk, Jim Coan will first describe …
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Shadow Selves: Becoming Skillful and Wise in Our Response to the Human Need for an Enemy
It is well known that human beings are both profoundly interdependent and profoundly unconscious—a dangerous mix. In our conscious and unconscious desires to protect ourselves, we “need” an enemy whom to fight against, control, or withdraw from. In Polly Young-Eisendrath’s decades-long professional experience as a Jungian psychoanalyst and a couples therapist, as well as her …
