Abstract
A salient objective feature of the social environment in which people find themselves is group size. Knowledge of group size is highly relevant to behavioural scientists given that humans spend considerable time in social settings and the number of others influences much of human behaviour. What size of group do people actually look for and encounter in everyday life? Here we report four survey studies and one experience-sampling study (total N = 4,398) which provide evidence for the predominance of the dyad in daily life. Relative to larger group sizes, dyads are most common across a wide range of activities (e.g., conversations, projects, holidays, movies, sports, bars) obtained from three time moments (past activities, present, and future activities), sampling both mixed-sex and same-sex groups, with three different methodological approaches (retrospective reports, real-time data capture, and preference measures) in the United States and the Netherlands. We offer four mechanisms that may help explain this finding: reciprocity, coordination, social exclusion, and reproduction. The present findings advance our understanding of how individuals organize themselves in everyday life.
Highlights
Our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours are influenced by those around us–in conversations at home, in shared activities such as going out for dinner with friends, and while working on projects with colleagues
We provide preliminary empirical evidence from four survey studies that examined the size of the group in which people found themselves across social activities including dinner, movies/concert, off work chats, chats at work, projects, holidays, sports activity, and bars, as well as an experience sampling study (N = 274) of randomly selected situations people experience throughout daily life
Full information on data screening can be found in the Supporting Information (SI)
Summary
Emotions, and behaviours are influenced by those around us–in conversations at home, in shared activities such as going out for dinner with friends, and while working on projects with colleagues. Impressive strides have been made to expand theory on human group size, addressing interdependence at different levels of group size and activity (Caporaels Core Configurations Model [5,6]) and how larger social group sizes may have selected for larger primate brains–Dunbars social brain hypothesis [7].
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