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Escribano D, Lapuente FJ, Cuesta JA, Dunbar RIM, Sánchez A. Stability of the personal relationship networks in a longitudinal study of middle school students. Sci Rep 2023; 13:14575. [PMID: 37666889 PMCID: PMC10477262 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-41787-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/16/2023] [Accepted: 08/31/2023] [Indexed: 09/06/2023] Open
Abstract
The personal network of relationships is structured in circles of friendships, that go from the most intense relationships to the least intense ones. While this is a well established result, little is known about the stability of those circles and their evolution in time. To shed light on this issue, we study the temporal evolution of friendships among teenagers during two consecutive academic years by means of a survey administered on five occasions. We show that the first two circles, best friends and friends, can be clearly observed in the survey but also that being in one or the other leads to more or less stable relationships. We find that being in the same class is one of the key drivers of friendship evolution. We also observe an almost constant degree of reciprocity in the relationships, around 60%, a percentage influenced both by being in the same class and by gender homophily. Not only do our results confirm the mounting evidence supporting the circle structure of human social networks, but they also show that these structures persist in time despite the turnover of individual relationships-a fact that may prove particularly useful for understanding the social environment in middle schools.
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Affiliation(s)
- Diego Escribano
- Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911, Leganés, Madrid, Spain
| | - Francisco J Lapuente
- Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria Blas de Otero, 28024, Madrid, Spain
- Departamento de Biología y Geología, Física y Química Inorgánica, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 28933, Móstoles, Madrid, Spain
| | - José A Cuesta
- Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911, Leganés, Madrid, Spain
- Instituto de Biocomputación y Física de Sistemas Complejos (BIFI), Universidad de Zaragoza, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain
| | - Robin I M Dunbar
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX2 6GG, UK
| | - Angel Sánchez
- Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911, Leganés, Madrid, Spain.
- Instituto de Biocomputación y Física de Sistemas Complejos (BIFI), Universidad de Zaragoza, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain.
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Dunbar RIM. The Anatomy of Friendship. Trends Cogn Sci 2018; 22:32-51. [PMID: 29273112 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.10.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 112] [Impact Index Per Article: 18.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/17/2017] [Revised: 10/16/2017] [Accepted: 10/18/2017] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Friendship is the single most important factor influencing our health, well-being, and happiness. Creating and maintaining friendships is, however, extremely costly, in terms of both the time that has to be invested and the cognitive mechanisms that underpin them. Nonetheless, personal social networks exhibit many constancies, notably in their size and their hierarchical structuring. Understanding the processes that give rise to these patterns and their evolutionary origins requires a multidisciplinary approach that combines social and neuropsychology as well as evolutionary biology.
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Affiliation(s)
- R I M Dunbar
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, New Richards Building, Old Road Campus, Headington, Oxford OX3 7LG, UK.
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Lewis PA, Birch A, Hall A, Dunbar RIM. Higher order intentionality tasks are cognitively more demanding. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2018; 12:1063-1071. [PMID: 28338962 PMCID: PMC5490680 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsx034] [Citation(s) in RCA: 34] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/27/2016] [Accepted: 03/06/2017] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
A central assumption that underpins much of the discussion of the role played by social cognition in brain evolution is that social cognition is unusually cognitively demanding. This assumption has never been tested. Here, we use a task in which participants read stories and then answered questions about the stories in a behavioural experiment (39 participants) and an fMRI experiment (17 participants) to show that mentalising requires more time for responses than factual memory of a matched complexity and also that higher orders of mentalising are disproportionately more demanding and require the recruitment of more neurons in brain regions known to be associated with theory of mind, including insula, posterior STS, temporal pole and cerebellum. These results have significant implications both for models of brain function and for models of brain evolution.
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Affiliation(s)
- Penelope A Lewis
- School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Amy Birch
- Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK
| | - Alexander Hall
- School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Robin I M Dunbar
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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Radosz W, Mielnik-Pyszczorski A, Brzezińska M, Sznajd-Weron K. Q-voter model with nonconformity in freely forming groups: Does the size distribution matter? Phys Rev E 2017; 95:062302. [PMID: 28709181 DOI: 10.1103/physreve.95.062302] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/17/2017] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Abstract
We study a q-voter model with stochastic driving on a complete graph with q being a random variable described by probability density function P(q), instead of a constant value. We investigate two types of P(q): (1) artificial with the fixed expected value 〈q〉, but a changing variance and (2) empirical of freely forming groups in informal places. We investigate also two types of stochasticity that can be interpreted as different kinds of nonconformity (anticonformity or independence) to answer the question about differences observed at the macroscopic level between these two types of nonconformity in real social systems. Moreover, we ask the question if the behavior of a system depends on the average value of the group size q or rather on probability distribution function P(q).
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Affiliation(s)
- Wojciech Radosz
- Department of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
| | - Adam Mielnik-Pyszczorski
- Department of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
| | - Marta Brzezińska
- Department of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
| | - Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron
- Department of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
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Testing the cultural group selection hypothesis in Northern Ghana and Oaxaca. Behav Brain Sci 2016; 39:e31. [PMID: 27561825 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x15000047] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
We examine the cultural group selection (CGS) hypothesis in light of our fieldwork in Northern Ghana and Oaxaca, highly multi-ethnic regions. Our evidence fails to corroborate two central predictions of the hypothesis: that the cultural group is the unit of evolution, and that cultural homogenization is to be expected as the outcome of a selective process.
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Abstract
Higher-order mentalising is the ability to represent the beliefs and desires of other people at multiple, iterated levels - a capacity that sets humans apart from other species. However, there has not yet been a systematic attempt to determine what cognitive processes underlie this ability. Here we present three correlational studies assessing the extent to which performance on higher-order mentalising tasks relates to emotion recognition, self-reported empathy and self-inhibition. In Study 1a and 1b, examining emotion recognition and empathy, a relationship was identified between individual differences in the ability to mentalise and an emotion recognition task (the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task), but no correlation was found with the Empathy Quotient, a self-report scale of empathy. Study 2 investigated whether a relationship exists between individual mentalising abilities and four different forms of self-inhibition: motor inhibition, executive inhibition, automatic imitation and temporal discounting. Results demonstrate that only temporal discounting performance relates to mentalising ability; suggesting that cognitive skills relevant to representation of the minds of others' are not influenced by the ability to perform more basic inhibition. Higher-order mentalising appears to rely on the cognitive architecture that serves both low-level social cognition (emotion recognition), and complex forms of inhibition.
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Waller BM, Hope L, Burrowes N, Morrison ER. Twelve (not so) angry men. GROUP PROCESSES & INTERGROUP RELATIONS 2011. [DOI: 10.1177/1368430211407099] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Individuals in large groups do not always contribute equally to group decision making. This may be due to constraints on conversational group size, as when a group is comprised of more than 4 people, it spontaneously fissions into smaller groups within which conversations take place. Thus, if conversations are attempted in larger groups, some individuals will not be part of the spontaneously forming discursive subgroup and, consequently, may not contribute to group decision making. Here, using a mock jury paradigm, the effect of hierarchically subdividing groups to mimic the spontaneous formation of optimally sized conversational groups (while maintaining an overarching group size of 12) was tested. Individuals in the subdivided condition reported greater equality of contribution to the decision-making process than individuals in the control condition, and experienced less inhibition from participation due to the activities of others.
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Grainger AS, Dunbar RIM. The structure of dyadic conversations and sex differences in social style. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2009. [DOI: 10.1556/jep.7.2009.1.8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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