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Socializing proves to stand behind brain evolution

November 28, 2007

Socializing proves to stand behind brain evolution

Peter Pirolli raises an interesting question, on his Augmented Social Cognition blog, of what the social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Wikidashboard “buy us” as a mankind, directly relating the size of mankind’s social circle to the size of the human brain.
He builds on the findings that “neocortext ratio for various species is strongly correlated with the average size of the social group for members of that species (and for humans that number is 150 at the limit).” Dunbar found that 150 is the maximum number of social connections that a human brain can closely keep up with - the notion also known as the Dunbar number.
“Recent evidence suggests that [the neocortex ratio] is more specifically correlated with pairbonding,” Pirolli writes on the blog. “But even more importantly, it appears that increasing sociality increases reproductive success. So social cognition increases fitness.” Which translates into the more social connections one has, and the closer one keeps up with their acquaintances and their relations, and the in-between relations, the wiser one becomes.
Pirolli quotes the findings of comparative biologists, who claim that “our ability to maintain awareness and reason about complex social relations buys us something important.”
“So, assuming that things like Twitter and Facebook (or the Wikidashboard) and the rest give us greater social awareness and reasoning—what exactly does it buy us?” Pirolli concludes.
Photo: Flickr

Written by mockebird · Filed Under US, Science, Intelligence, Uncategorized