Yeah I want to echo everyone else here. The brain stats have felt a little pointless like they are useful for some making friends but generally you can find other ways to do the same thing and then they are useful in certain missions you can also avoid and then dodging assassinations which you can also avoid.
It makes sense that having good social stats is key to winning this game but at the same time it does feel like you have to be overly reliant on them to function. Maybe I haven't specialised enough in the stats to double check if at a high enough check you can use stuff like endurance to survive social situations like you could do in LLTQ with composure but it certainly feels like not having social stats early is too big of a problem to avoid taking them.