1,721,406 research outputs found
Verbal vs Nonverbal Cues in Conversation
No full textThese data were obtained in an online experiment in which they heard 8 audio clips of natural conversations either in English or in (Chilean) Spanish under three conditions (in the order shown): delexicalised, converted to pitch only and full audio. Subjects were asked to identify the relationship between the speakers in each case from a randomised list of 8 relationship types (4 positive/affiliative, 4 negative). The 8 audio clips represent each of these relationship types
Evolutionary psychology in the round
No full textThis book chapter is not currently available via ORA. N.B. Professor Dunbar is now based at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
We are not islands there is such a thing as society
Full text linkRobin Dunbar talks to Lance Workman about his attempts to see the big picture and find the big number
A brief overview of human evolution
No full textThis book chapter is not currently available via ORA, but you may be able to access it via the publisher copy link on this page
Thinking big: how the evolution of social life shaped the human mind
No full textWhen and how did the brains of our hominin ancestors become human minds? When and why did our capacity for language or art, music and dance evolve? It is the contention of this pathbreaking and provocative book that it was the need for early humans to live in ever-larger social groups, and to maintain social relations over ever-greater distances the ability to think big that drove the enlargement of the human brain and the development of the human mind. This social brain hypothesis, put forward by evolutionary psychologists such as Robin Dunbar, one of the authors of this book, can be tested against archaeological and fossil evidence, as archaeologists Clive Gamble and John Gowlett show in the second part of Thinking Big. Along the way, the three authors touch on subjects as diverse and diverting as the switch from finger-tip grooming to vocal grooming or the crucial importance of making fire for the lengthening of the social day. Ultimately, the social worlds we inhabit today can be traced back to our Stone Age ancestors
Human evolution and the archaeology of the social brain
No full textThe picture of human evolution has been transformed by new evidence in recent years, but contributing disciplines seem to have difficulty in sharing knowledge on a common basis. The disciplines producing primary data in paleoanthropology scarcely reach out to a broader picture and are often bypassed by writers in other disciplines. Archaeology is encouraged by its material evidence to project a view that "what you see is what there was": by definition, there can be only a late flowering of human abilities. Yet there is a vital alternative paleontological record of the early hominins that gives us important information about their brains and suggests that brains become large and complex far earlier than that late material complexity might imply. How, then, to account for the large brains acting far back in time? Evolutionary psychology, in the form of the social brain hypothesis, claims that these large brains were concerned with managing a far-reaching social life. In becoming human, those brains did not merely become larger, but of necessity they took on new socialized perspectives, a domestication of emotional capacities allowing greater insights and collaboration. We argue that there is at least a 2-million-year social record that must be made part of mainstream interpretation. © 2012 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved
The social brain and the shape of the Palaeolithic
No full textIt is often the case in interdisciplinary accounts of human evolution that archaeological data are either ignored or treated superficially. This article sets out to redress this position by using archaeological evidence from the last 2.5 million years to test the social brain hypothesis (SBH) – that our social lives drove encephalization. To do this we construct a map of our evolving social complexity that concentrates on two resources – materials and emotions – that lie at the basis of all social interaction. In particular, novel cultural and biological mechanisms are seen as evolutionary responses to problems of cognitive load arising from the need to integrate more individuals and sub-units into the larger communities predicted by the SBH. The Palaeolithic evidence for the amplification of these twin resources into novel social forms is then evaluated. Here the SBH is used to differentiate three temporal movements (2.6–1.6 Ma, 1.5–0.4 Ma and 300–25 ka) and their varied evolutionary responses are described in detail. Attention is drawn to the second movement where there is an apparent disconnect between a rise in encephalization and a stasis in material culture. This disconnect is used to discuss the co-evolutionary relationship that existed between materials and emotions to solve cognitive problems but which, at different times, amplified one resource rather than the other. We conclude that the shape of the Palaeolithic is best conceived as a gradient of change rather than a set of step-like revolutions in society and cultur
The Stability of Transient Relationships
Full text linkIn contrast to long-term relationships, far less is known about the temporal
evolution of transient relationships, although these constitute a substantial
fraction of people's communication networks. Previous literature suggests that
ratings of relationship emotional intensity decay gradually until the
relationship ends. Using mobile phone data from three countries (US, UK, and
Italy), we demonstrate that the volume of communication between ego and its
transient alters does not display such a systematic decay, instead showing a
lack of any dominant trends. This means that the communication volume of egos
to groups of similar transient alters is stable. We show that alters with
longer lifetimes in ego's network receive more calls, with the lifetime of the
relationship being predictable from call volume within the first few weeks of
first contact. This is observed across all three countries, which include
samples of egos at different life stages. The relation between early call
volume and lifetime is consistent with the suggestion that individuals
initially engage with a new alter so as to evaluate their potential as a tie in
terms of homophily.Comment: Published in Scientific Reports 13, 6120 (2023
The Nature of Sweetness: An Indigenous Fermentation Complex in Amazonian Guyana
Full text linkThis chapter is an ethnographic case study of the fermentation of cassava beer among the indigenous Makushi people of southern Guyana. The chapter constitutes the first in-depth anthropological study of parakari, a unique kind of cassava beer fermented via the cultivation of a domesticated species of saprotrophic fungus (Rhizopus sp.). Herein, the author explores Makushi theories and practices of fermentation, and, more broadly, the ways in which alcoholic drinks operate as catalysts for processes of social and cosmic reproduction and transformation in indigenous Amazonia. For the Makushi, as it is argued, the production and consumption of cassava beer is understood as a more-than-human process of person-making, harnessing the vibrant agency of a diversity of vegetal, animal, microbial, and spiritual entities and forces. Fermentation, in this frame, is treated both as a sociotechnical system and an ecosystem
- …
