Matthew Lieberman, Ph.D. - Biographical Sketch
Associate Professor, UCLA Department of Psychology, Division of Social Psychology
Research Scientist, Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, UCLA Department of Psychology

Research Interests

My research tends to employ a Social Cognitive Neuroscience approach (see my SCN lab linked above) using methods from cognitive neuroscience such as fMRI and work with brain damaged patients to answer questions about the nature of social cognition. In particular, the research in my lab focuses on three themes. First, we are examining the ways in which explicit conscious thought can disrupt and interfere with more automatic
nonconscious emotional processes. We have shown that the amygdala, a structure in the brain that automatically responds to emotionally salient information, becomes less sensitive when the prefrontal cortex, critical for language and logical reasoning, is activated. Second, we are examining the extent to which individual differences in the sensitivity of the anterior cingulated cortex relates to neuroticism and predicts different forms of social cognition including self-awareness, social comparison, self-doubt, and lower self-perceptions of status and power. We are also interested in social intuition. We believe that the basal ganglia are critical for social intuitions such as spontaneously making sense of the facial expressions and tone of voice of others, even without knowing that we are doing so. We have conducted neuroimaging work showing that the basal
ganglia is critical for nonconsciously learning sequences of information that would result in intuition.

Recent Publications

Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2005).
Broken hearts and broken bones: The neurocognitive overlap between social pain and physical pain.  To appear in K. D. Williams, J. P. Forgas, & W. von Hippel (eds.), The Social Outcast: Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection, and Bullying (pp. 109-127). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lieberman, M. D. & Eisenberger, N. I. (2005).
A pain, by any other name (rejection, exclusion, ostracism), still hurts the same: The role of dorsal anterior cingulate in social and physical pain.  To appear in J. Cacioppo, P. Visser, & C. Pickett (Eds.), Social Neuroscience: People Thinking About People (pp. 167-187). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Eisenberger, N. I., Jarcho, J. J., Lieberman, M. D., & Naliboff, B. D. (in press). An experimental study of shared sensitivity to physical pain and social rejection. Pain.

Lieberman, M. D., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2005). 
The self and social perception: Three kinds of questions in social cognitive neuroscience.  In A. Easton & N. Emery (eds.), Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotional and Social Behavior (pp. 195-235).  Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

Lieberman, M. D., Jarcho, J. M., & Obayashi, J. (2005).
Attributional inference across cultures: Similar automatic attributions and different controlled corrections. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 889-901.

Lieberman, M. D., Hariri, A., Jarcho, J. J., Eisenberger, N. I., & Bookheimer, S. Y. (2005).
An fMRI investigation of race-related amygdala activity in African-American and Caucasian-American individuals. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 720-722.

Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Satpute, A. B. (2005).
Personality from a controlled processing perspective: an fMRI study of neuroticism, extraversion, and self-consciousness. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 169-181.

Satpute, A. B.., Sellner, D., Waldman, M. D., Tabibnia, G., Holyoak, K. J., & Lieberman, M. D. (2005).
An fMRI study of causal judgments. European Journal of Neuroscience, 22, 1233-1238.

Lieberman, M. D. (2006).
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience: When opposites attract. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1, 1-2.

Lieberman, M. D. (2006).
Neural bases of situational context effects on social perception. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1, 73-74.

Lieberman, M. D. (2007).
Social cognitive neuroscience: A review of core processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 259-289.

Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M., Tom, S., Pfeifer, J. H., Way, B. M. (in press).
Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity to affective stimuli. Psychological Science.

Eisenberger, N. I., Way, B., Lieberman, M. D. & Taylor, S. E. (in press). Understanding genetic risk for aggression: Clues from the brain’s response to social exclusion. Biological Psychiatry.

Lieberman, M. D. (in press).  
Why symbolic processing of affect can disrupt negative affect: Social cognitive and affective neuroscience investigations.  To appear in A. Todorov, S. T. Fiske, & D. Prentice (eds.) Social Neuroscience: Toward understanding the underpinnings of the social mind.  Oxford University Press.

Contact
Lieberman, Matthew
Associate Professor
UCLA Department of Psychology
4461C Franz Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563
Email: lieber@ucla.edu
Phone: 310-206-4050
Fax: 310-206-5895