Mariette DiChristina Editor in Chief

editors@SciAmMind.com

(from the editor)

MIndBEHAVIOR • BRAIN SCIENCE • INSIGHTS

www.Scientif icAmerican.com/Mind ScIENTIfIc AmERIcAN mINd 1

EdITOR IN cHIEf: Mariette DiChristina EdITOR: Ingrid Wickelgren

ART dIREcTOR: Patricia Nemoto ISSuE PHOTOGRAPHY EdITOR: Bridget Gerety Small

cOPY dIREcTOR: Maria-Christina Keller SENIOR cOPY EdITOR: Daniel C. Schlenoff

EdITORIAL AdmINISTRATOR: Avonelle Wing SENIOR SEcRETARY: Maya Harty

cONTRIBuTING EdITORS: Gareth Cook, David Dobbs, Robert Epstein, Emily Laber-Warren, Jonah Lehrer, Karen Schrock

cONTRIBuTING RESEARcHERS: Smitha Alampur, Kenneth Silber, Kevin Singer

mANAGING PROducTION EdITOR: Richard Hunt SENIOR PROducTION EdITOR: Michelle Wright

BOARd Of AdVISERS:

HAL ARkOwITz: Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Arizona

STEPHEN J. cEcI: Professor of Developmental Psychology, Cornell University

R. dOuGLAS fIELdS: Chief, Nervous System Development and Plasticity Section, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

S. ALExANdER HASLAm: Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology, University of Exeter

cHRISTOf kOcH: Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology, California Institute of Technology

ScOTT O. LILIENfELd: Professor of Psychology, Emory University

STEPHEN L. mAckNIk, Director, Laboratory of Behavioral Neuropsychology, Barrow Neurological Institute

SuSANA mARTINEz-cONdE, Director, Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience, Barrow Neurological Institute

JOHN H. mORRISON: Chairman, Department of Neuroscience, and Director, Neurobiology of Aging Laboratories, Mount Sinai School of Medicine

VILAYANuR S. RAmAcHANdRAN: Director, Center for the Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies

dIANE ROGERS-RAmAcHANdRAN: Research Associate, Center for the Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego

STEPHEN d. REIcHER: Professor of Psychology, University of St. Andrews

Some of the articles in Scientific American Mind are adapted from articles originally appearing in Gehirn & Geist.

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Together and ApartIn the six years since Scientific American Mind began, I’ve learned a lot about how the mind and brain work. No surprise there. What is startling is how some articles can still make me completely rethink things that I thought I knew.

One such piece is this issue’s cover story, “Get Attached,” by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel S. F. Heller, starting on page 22. The importance of attachment—a sound emotional relationship—between a child and a parent has long been well understood. Essentially, the more secure the emotional bond, the more able the child is to develop independence and head into the world successfully. Different types of attachment styles also predict behavior.

I had no idea, however, that attachment goes beyond the links between parents and children. Adults who set out to find romantic relationships, too, display differ-ent types of attachment styles—and those styles predict behavior with unnerving ac-curacy. An understanding of our own attachment style and that of our partner can also predict our eventual happiness in a given relationship. The important take-home message is that you don’t have to leave your love life to chance: psychological science can help. When you are done reading the article, you can visit www.ScientificAmer-ican.com/mind/jan2011/quiz to find a survey that identifies attachment styles.

Connections loom large for people, because humans are such social creatures. Getting along with others helps us succeed as individuals. What about the opposite—

when a person is ostracized, or shunned, by a group? The sad result is pain that can be physical as well as mental, as psychologist Kipling D. Williams explains in “The Pain of Exclusion,” beginning on page 30. The sting (which, in experiments, actu-ally was lessened with pain reliever) is an evolutionarily helpful reminder to try to get along with others to enhance the odds of survival. As Ben Franklin, commenting about the likelihood of the Revolutionary patriots avoiding the noose for treason, wryly put it: “If we do not hang together, we will most assuredly hang separately.”

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