Want to be a social media superstar? Get a bigger brain.
- Wed, August 22 2012
- Filed under: Social networking and web 2.0
According to ReadWriteWeb, British anthropologists and psychologists writing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B have found a direct linear relationship between the size of a person’s social network and the size of an area of the brain known as the orbital prefrontal cortex.
Interestingly, the team of researchers included Robin Dunbar, who created the Dunbar Number. It quantifies the number of meaningful relationships a person can maintain - which according to Dunbar is 150 people. I guess “meaningful” is a relative term. Anyway, according to ReadWriteWeb, “Establishing a new correlation between social networks and prefrontal cortex size lends credibility to Dunbar’s assertions that our brains aren’t big to be smart, but to help us manage relationships that will ultimately help us survive. In other words, a really smart loner caveman was less likely to survive than the average guy everybody liked to come along on the mammoth hunt.”
So the bigger your prefrontal cortex, the more likely you were to land a mammoth steak then - or the more friends you can handle on Facebook now.
Then there’s the ability to get where other people are coming from - also known as “theory of mind” skill. Pair that with a big orbital prefrontal cortex and you’re a social butterfly.
So what do we do with this information? Well, you could insist on an MRI for your next social media manager as Roger Dooley jokes in another article.
Or you could recognize a larger fact, as Roger also points out. Some people are more wired for social graces than others. Seek out the naturals at forging connections when you look for staff to network for your organization. It’s hard to teach someone how to make connections with facility - especially if their orbital prefrontal cortex is on the wee bitty side. You may be better off going with nature over nurture. Hire the social butterfly rather than trying to hatch one.
Comments
Gosh can’t believe there is no comment here yet!
This actually makes sense. There are two restraining factors on social media. First is time. Everything is an opportunity cost. And social media is time/labor intensive. Can or will you give up time elsewhere for this activity. The second is the nature of one’s personality. I have trained many interns for a client. some naturally take to twitter. Others do not. Some are shy. Some just aren’t social personalities.
Going back to social media history when friendster and tribe.net came out they were immediately used by my friends as a new method of sharing information about underground music parties in Los Angeles. Previously these events (some could be called raves) were by word of mouth, SMS text, and email. People would be at these events with small party fliers like over sized business cards and wold be handed out only to friends and people they want to come to the future event. This way the events stayed hush hush.
Now I see them posted on Facebook….People for get Social Media is about being social. Not everyone is social who uses Social Media.
So do you want the number for my beverly hills plastic surgeon Katya? 8)
Recently, I raised the issue of the last paragraph in one of my kinder LinkedIn groups. I’ve been trying to find out if there might be room for me to break into the non-profit sector, and I seemed to be an untouchable in the forums where I posted questions. There was no response whatsoever while exchanges continued all around me. It has been suggested to me that there could be some bias toward seasoned for-profit workers who wish to apply their gifts in a more personally meaningful arena.
What about all of those young people with thousands of “friends”? Are we truly to believe that they are more gifted in this area, or is their accumulation more due to cultural pressure?
You don’t say how large this “study” was, but I’m guessing not very!