Summa

Summary
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Chapter Summary
Abstract
The two chapters summarized in this paper is generally built on the discussions of the human being’s social brain. The social brain is unlike any other part of the body as it determines the behavior and character of human beings. It is not in doubt that human beings have the largest brains relative to the body size; the large brain size probably dictates why people live in large and complex social groupings. For human beings to make certain decisions it is imperative that they make them by managing and altering information with respect to the changing states within their social groupings. Positive emotional states point to healthy thoughts, and values and even on the physical states of human beings. People collect emotional experiences from the social groupings which stimulate positive feeling states, and the ways in which moods often stimulate the appropriate healthy behaviors and induce support from social groups.

The chapter on managing the social brain talks about the large brains that human beings, perhaps other primates too, have compared to other animals. Human beings need a larger brain because they live in complex societies, which entail numerous interdependent relationships that transform over time. For people to make decisions on actions, they must manage and manipulate information regarding the transforming states of the social group. An important reason for such an occurrence is that human social groups are pegged on both casual and bonded relationships, with the latter helping individuals against the stress that might be generated as a result of living in a large group.

The central thread in the chapter is that a regular group size for an animal is related to the size of the neocortex, specifically, the size of the brain’s frontal lobe.
The idea for such a correlation in human beings, and even in apes, reflects a normal group size, perhaps 150 for human beings, which I approximately three times as large as those of fellow apes. Well, it turns out to be the normal size for communities in smaller size society and people with personal social networks in the recent generation. Probably, it is the result of a cognitive restraint that been proven in a number of neuroimaging studies. The complex nature of human social brain has a direct consequence to cognition, social stress, social bonding and social bias. An important factor suggested by the author that credible evidence has backed a notion that team and group working enhance learning, and which is evident in the history of human beings. (Jensen, 2005). Moreover, one’s position within a social group influences brain chemistry, which consequently affects behavior. While the writer asserts that racial bias does not have any biological basis, rather the human brain only responds in a negative way to people who are different from themselves if they have not been desensitized in the differences.
Positive emotional states are a precursor to healthy thoughts, values and generally, the physical well-being. The author considered explored the potential mechanisms that linked pleasant feeling to a good health. The chapter looked into the direct consequence of positive effects on physiology, in particular, the people’s immune system. The information value collected from emotional experiences, the emotional supplies stimulated by the positive feeling states and the manner in which a mood can stimulate the relevant health behaviors and the inducement of social support. The chapter’s development is akin to the Hippocratic conception that positive emotional awareness and healthy effects might be linked through numerous pathways. The areas of the brain that are involved in the regulation of the states include the dorsal pons, the cerebellum, prefrontal cortex, the medial  parietal and cingulate lobe, orbitofrontal lobes, motor and sensory cortex.
Human decisions such as fear or violence are powerful emotions that have a potential to create a paradigm shift in how human beings think about the decisions they make. The book has elicited a number of researches to back up the claim (Wolfe, 2005). The studies have revealed that emotions comprise potent, insidious and predictable driver of decision-making. Across various domains, vital reliabilities seem to be on the mechanisms through which emotions affects judgments and the choices that people make. The chapter presented and explored what have essentially been the outcomes of deep learning into the emotions and decisions that people make through time. Moreover, the chapter seems to have proposed that human being relies on an integrated model for decision making, and which accounts for the traditional and emotional inputs, that synthesized the relevant research that corroborated the authors own perspectives on the same.
References
Jensen, E. (2005). Teaching with the brain in mind. ASCD.
Wolfe, P. (2005). Teaching with the brain in mind. ASCD.