The Social Brain

2014/04/01 by Robin Dunbar, R. I. M. Dunbar
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Primate Behavior and Ecology #Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation

paper · doi:10.1177/0963721413517118

Abstract

The social-brain hypothesis refers to a quantitative relationship between social-group size and neocortex volume in monkeys and apes. This relationship predicts a group size of approximately 150 for humans, which turns out to be the typical size of both social communities in small-scale societies and personal social networks in the modern world. This constraint on the size of social groups is partly cognitive and partly temporal. It gives rise to a layered structure in primate and human social groups that, in humans, reflects both emotional closeness in relationships and the frequency of contact. These findings have potentially important implications for the way in which human organizations are structured.

Citations

• The Strength of Weak Ties
• Relationships and the social brain: Integrating psychological and evolutionary perspectives
• The brain opioid theory of social attachment: a review of the evidence

Related

• Discrete hierarchical organization of social group sizes
• A model for the emergence of social organization in primates
• Contribution of social network analysis and collective phenomena to understanding social complexity and cognition
• Neural Mechanisms of Social Cognition in Primates
• Specialized Networks for Social Cognition in the Primate Brain