What is the social brain hypothesis?
The “social brain hypothesis” posits that the cognitive demands of sociality have driven the evolution of substantially enlarged brains in primates and some other mammals. Whether such reasoning can apply to all social animals is an open question.
What is the social brain hypothesis and what number does Dunbar associate with this hypothesis in the case of early human groups?
Dunbar concluded that the size, relative to the body, of the neocortex – the part of the brain associated with cognition and language – is linked to the size of a cohesive social group. This ratio limits how much complexity a social system can handle.
What is the evidence in support of the Social Brain hypothesis?
The primary evidence in support of the social brain hypothesis comes from the fact that, across primates, there is a correlation between mean social group size and more or less any measure of brain size one cares to use (Fig.
What is the social brain hypothesis quizlet?
What is the social brain hypothesis? -main evolutionary pressure for human intellectual development is the ability to understand and predict complex social interactions, work together, and to outwit our peers.
What is the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis?
The “Machiavellian intelligence” hypothesis (or the “social brain” hypothesis) posits that large brains and distinctive cognitive abilities of humans have evolved via intense social competition in which social competitors developed increasingly sophisticated “Machiavellian” strategies as a means to achieve higher …
Who proposed the social brain hypothesis?
Robin Dunbar
Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology at the University of Liverpool, England.
What would be an accurate prediction for the social brain hypothesis quizlet?
social brain hypothesis. According to the social brain hypothesis, what would be an accurate prediction? other people.
What is a Machiavellian personality type?
Machiavellianism is a personality trait that denotes cunningness, the ability to be manipulative, and a drive to use whatever means necessary to gain power. Machiavellianism is one of the traits that forms the Dark Triad, along with narcissism and psychopathy.
Are machiavellians intelligent?
Machiavellians may be the most intelligent of the dark personalities.
How many relationships can the human brain handle?
150 people
A new study indicates that a cognitive limit on human group sizes cannot be derived in this manner. An individual human can maintain stable social relationships with about 150 people. This is the proposition known as ‘Dunbar’s number’ — that the architecture of the human brain sets an upper limit on our social lives.
Which of the following is an example of normative social influence?
Normative social influence is usually associated with compliance, where a person changes their public behaviour but not their private beliefs. For example, a person may feel pressurised to smoke because the rest of their friends are.
What is the tendency for people to do better on simple tasks when in the presence of other people called?
social facilitation
The tendency to perform tasks better or faster in the presence of others is known as social facilitation.
How is the social brain hypothesis related to evolution?
This is reflected in a correlation between social group size and neocortex size in primates (but not other species of animals), commonly known as the social brain hypothesis, although this relationship itself is the outcome of an underlying relationship between brain size and behavioral complexity.
Why are primate brains so big compared to other vertebrates?
Primates have unusually large brains for body size compared to all other vertebrates. The conventional explanation for this is known as the “social brain hypothesis,” which argues that primates need large brains because their form of sociality is much more complex than that of other species (Byrne & Whiten, 1988 ).
Where did the idea of the social brain come from?
The original idea for the social brain dates back to the 1970s, when a number of primatologists suggested that primate intelligence might be related to the demands of their more complex social world (Jolly, 1969; Humphrey, 1976; Kummer, 1982 ), and the name itself was later coined by the neuroscientist Lesley Brothers ( 1990 ).