Threat Response vs Reward Response

...more useful understandings about behaviour change from neuroscience...bold is my emphasis

Excerpt from The Homa Files, Georgetown University, 20 October 2009

'Many studies now show that the brain equates social needs with survival.

For example, being hungry and being ostracized activate similar neural responses.

Recently, researchers have documented that the threat response is often triggered in social situations, and it tends to be more intense and longer-lasting than the reward response.

Because the threat response uses up oxygen and glucose from the blood, they are diverted from other parts of the brain, including the working memory function, which processes new information and ideas. This impairs analytic thinking, creative insight, and problem solving; in other words, just when people most need their sophisticated mental capabilities, the brain’s internal resources are taken away from them...

'Five particular qualities minimize the threat response status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (SCARF)...'