Amir Levine
speaker
1,160 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2026
last heard 15 Jun
Amir Levine’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And that's something that I call the cyberball effect, which is like the first chapter of the book.
And it really describes this very basic experiment, the cyberball experiment.
And in it, you play a little simple video game in which you play a game of catch with two other characters.
And then all of a sudden, they stop throwing the ball in your direction.
And what we see, like in fMRI studies, we see areas of painful distress and self-scrutiny that come online.
And the brain really hates exclusion.
It's really low.
I can't even, like, it's such a strong reaction that we get when we get excluded like that or ignored, by the way.
And
We also, when they check psychologically, they see that people feel that their life is less meaningful, that they're less in control over their life, and less self-esteem.
So when I came across all of these findings, I was actually really surprised because I never thought that my self-esteem or how much I feel that I'm in control over my life or how much I assign meaning to my life is related to how connected I am to other people.
But to our social brain, it really, really matters.
And sort of maintaining that level of connectedness is really important for us.
Yes.
And the effect is so strong that even they try to reverse it.
They say, Dan, I'm going to give you some money.
And whenever the ball is not thrown in your direction, I'm going to give you a whole bunch of money.
And they saw that that didn't matter at all.
Still the same areas of the brain lit up just as powerfully.
And they took it even a step further, which I don't really understand how.
Showing 101–120 of 1,160 · page 6 of 58
← Previous
Next →