Matthew Lieberman is associate professor of social neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles.  In recent weeks, he’s also rebutted the claims of a recent paper, “Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience,” which explored the high correlations between measures of personality or emotionality in the individual--such as the experience of fear, or the willingness to trust another person--with the activity of certain brain areas as observed in an fMRI machine. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Lieberman about why most fMRI correlations aren’t false, the “reward” of intense grief and why accepting unfair offers seems to activate brain areas involved with self-control.

LEHRER: Your field of research has come under fire in a recent paper titled "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience."   What's the authors' argument and have they identified a significant problem in this field?