This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Games People Play" by Eric Berne. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Where does the human need for recognition stem from? What can biology and psychology tell us about the hunger for social recognition?
The desire you have to get more likes on social media or be popular in school can be explained by science. From childhood, humans need physical and social contact to survive and become functional. Eric Berne explores this phenomenon in his book Games People Play.
Here’s why social recognition is vital to our well-being, according to Berne.
Our Hunger for “Strokes” Is at the Root of Social Interaction
In his book Games People Play, Eric Berne argues that the human need for recognition and interaction arises from an underlying “hunger” for physical contact. This hunger begins in infancy as a need for “strokes”—literal for the infant, metaphorical for the adult—and remains linked to our mental and physical well-being throughout life.
First, we’ll trace this need from infancy to adulthood. We’ll then discuss how it leads to what Berne calls “time structuring,” our mutual effort to fill our days with necessary social contact.
(Shortform note: Berne is known for using strict reductionism: He worked by breaking social behavior down to its (theoretically) smallest parts. Compare this to the holistic approach, originating in Gestalt psychology, which argues that you can only understand a whole by looking at how all of the parts go together. Combine the two and we reach a fuller perspective: Break an object down to its elements, then figure out how they relate. For example, you can’t understand a car motor by looking at its parts in isolation—you also have to figure out how they go together. Now do the same for the psyche: Identify its smallest elements, then explore how they compose the larger structure and its functions)
Infants Depend on Sustained Physical Contact
As infants, we need consistent physical attention from our mothers. Without sustained “stroking”—literal stroking, or head pats, peek-a-boo, and so on—infants don’t develop properly.
If an infant is neglected for long enough, her brainstem will experience nerve cell degradation. Without intervention this leads to death. So regular physical contact is a biological imperative for infants.
(Shortform note: Plenty of research confirms that infants need physical contact. It’s even been found that premature or otherwise unhealthy infants respond positively to light massage, suggesting that the nerve degradation Berne describes may be reversible. Going even further, varied stimulation like singing, playing games, laughing, and cuddling, has numerous benefits: They help the infant to develop early social and emotional competence and enhance their curiosity and appetite for learning. Even further, speaking and reading to babies can accelerate their language skills, leading to higher linguistic competence later in life.)
Adults Subsist on Social Recognition
Beyond infancy, our human need for recognition, interaction, and physical contact remains strong.
Unfortunately, Berne says, cultural conditioning discourages us from directly seeking a physical solution to this problem. As we age, we learn to make do with less intimate forms of recognition. By adulthood, the infant’s longing for her mother becomes a subtler need for simple social recognition—“Hi, how are you?” / “Good, thanks! You?”
Though we’ll no longer die from lack of touch, social recognition (Berne’s “stroking”) remains vital to our well-being as adults. Studies have shown that inmates who experience the prolonged social isolation of solitary confinement often develop physical and mental health issues. And even in laboratory settings, sensory deprivation can lead to temporary psychosis.
So, Berne infers, any kind of social interaction is better than none at all. This is why games still play a large role in our lives, despite often being unhealthy.
| The Types of Strokes Beyond Berne’s work in Games People Play, transactional analysts have delineated several different kinds of strokes. This can help us learn what kind of strokes, or recognition, we’re getting, and which we may need more of: -Do you get mainly positive or negative social contact? -Do you receive enough unconditional support, or mainly conditional recognition (“I love you no matter what” vs. “I love you because you validate me.” -Do you get mainly verbal or nonverbal strokes? Interestingly, Gary Chapman’s book The 5 Love Languages seems almost to extend right from Berne’s theory: Everyone needs strokes, Berne says; everyone needs a unique kind of recognition, adds Chapman. Read our guide of The 5 Love Languages here to learn which styles of recognition you and your partner need: physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, or gift giving. |
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Here's what you'll find in our full Games People Play summary :
- The many ways that we relate to one another through “games”
- Why you might be missing out on the fulfillment of game-free living
- How to identify and overcome unhealthy games
