Abstract
Humans use various social bonding methods known as social grooming, e.g. face to face communication, greetings, phone and social networking sites (SNS). SNS have drastically decreased time and distance constraints of social grooming. In this paper, I show that two types of social grooming (elaborate social grooming and lightweight social grooming) were discovered in a model constructed by 13 communication datasets including face to face, SNS and Chacma baboons. The separation of social grooming methods is caused by a difference in the trade-off between the number and strength of social relationships. The trade-off of elaborate social grooming is weaker than the trade-off of lightweight social grooming. On the other hand, the time and effort of elaborate methods are higher than those of lightweight methods. Additionally, my model connects social grooming behaviour and social relationship forms with these trade-offs. By analysing the model, I show that individuals tend to use elaborate social grooming to reinforce a few close relationships (e.g. face to face and Chacma baboons). By contrast, people tend to use lightweight social grooming to maintain many weak relationships (e.g. SNS). Humans with lightweight methods who live in significantly complex societies use various types of social grooming to effectively construct social relationships.
Highlights
The behaviour of constructing social relationships is called ‘social grooming’, which is not limited to humans but widely observed in primates [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
The changes of a in a < 0.8 (β2) had a smaller effect on power-law coefficients φ of social relationship forms than in a ≥ 0.8 (β1). This shows that strong social relationships decreased in a ≥ 0.8 because individuals having expanded and shallow social relationships have more of the amount of social grooming than individuals having limited and deep social relationships (G(a, α; C, m))
I constructed a model of social relationship forms depending on human behaviour restricted by a tradeoff between the number and strength of social relationships depending on social grooming methods
Summary
The behaviour of constructing social relationships is called ‘social grooming’, which is not limited to humans but widely observed in primates [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. I aim to explore how and why humans use various social grooming methods and how those methods affect human behaviour and social relationship forms For this purpose, I analyse the strength of the trade-off between the number and mean strength of social relationships as a key feature of social grooming methods. I analyse the strength of the trade-off between the number and mean strength of social relationships as a key feature of social grooming methods For this analysis, I extend the model [9] for C = Nma from a > 1 to a > 0 by introducing individuals’ strategies about the amount of social grooming behaviour. Humans should change social grooming strategies depending on the trade-off, i.e. they tend to use several social grooming methods for constructing various strengths of social relationships. The model connects social behaviour and social relationship forms with a trade-off between the number and mean strength of social relationships
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