Gregory Berns
Greg Berns, MD, PhD, is the Emory psychiatrist who heads the Center for Neuropolicy. The Center focuses on how the brain influences decision-making in politics, policy and business. The center involves School of Medicine, Emory College and Goizueta Business School researchers.
Berns says, “We all live in groups. Sometimes groups make good decisions, but groups often behave worse than any of its members would. We’re approaching the problem of collective decision-making from a new perspective by studying how the human brain functions in groups.â€
Center members advise decision-makers of all kinds by conducting experiments focused on biologically based pressures that influence collective decision-making. Through their discoveries, researchers will better understand how culture, intelligence and environment influence the way decisions are made and how basic human tendencies drive judgment in certain situations.
As Berns points out, people also need to understand how religious and political ideologies become transformed in the brain and can subvert basic self-survival value judgments, a phenomenon that occurs in war and terrorism.
“Collective decision-making is political, but politics are biological,†says Berns. “The human brain evolved to function in social groups. By discovering how our brains are wired to behave in groups, we can find solutions to problems of global impact.â€Berns is the author of Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment and Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently.
Learn more in the Center media kit, Emory Health magazine or listen to a podcast.
