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This chapter discusses recent research with prairie voles, rodents that live in a state of social monogamy similar to that of human beings. Knowledge of the relatively simple brains and neurohormonal processes of these animals helps to explain the origins of the human tendency to form strong, long-lasting social bonds and the emotions that accompany them. The chapter uses the term ‘social monogamy’ to distinguish the concept from that of sexual fidelity, which genetic testing has revealed to be exceedingly rare even in the apparently devoted prairie vole. Social monogamy refers to a way of living that promotes (but does not guarantee) sexual fidelity, shared parental care, and the reinforcement of social and emotional bonds. The chapter's research with prairie voles has identified two hormones — oxytocin and vasopressin — that appear to form the neural underpinnings of the social monogamy system. Interestingly, the physiological and emotional processes involved in social bonding and parental care are very similar to those that ensure wellness and survival (both hormones are important to healthy responses to stress and general coping). Increased knowledge of the ‘social nervous system’ of prairie voles will help us to understand why social support is so critical to human health and longevity. It may also explain why love and benevolence, which she sees as emotional reinforcements of social bonding, have healing powers.

Social relations are the core of a human self. Affiliations shape our social world, and ultimately alliances are the large players on the stage of human history. In the process of forging social links, human beings are sometimes lucky enough to enjoy the exercise of genuine existential freedom. These axioms are at the heart of the feminist account of self and social identity presented in this essay.

This chapter looks into the work of Desmond Morris, particularly his book, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's View of the Human Animal (1967). Morris took a more light-hearted approach to human nature than had either Ardrey or Lorenz, choosing to emphasize the pleasure-seeking aspect of human nature and the resulting sexual dilemmas of modern man. According to Morris, “the naked ape is the sexiest primate alive.” More than in any other species, he suggested, human social bonding resulted from sexual attraction and interactions. In The Naked Ape, Morris provocatively suggested that humans lost the fur covering the bodies of most other mammals because it facilitated sexual caresses and made possible the development of other, now accessible, sexual signals.

One of the most exciting recent developments to emerge from cognitive neuroscience, with the potential to impact significantly both on our understanding of music and of the therapeutic uses of music, is the discovery of the so-called human mirror neuron system (MNS). In essence, the MNS allows us to understand and predict the behaviour of others, by engaging the neural regions required to produce such behaviour ourselves. A working model has recently been developed of the potential role of the MNS in emotional, embodied responses to music, called Shared Affective Motion Experience (SAME). According to the SAME model, musical sound is perceived not only in terms of the auditory signal, but also in terms of the intentional sequences of expressive motor acts behind the signal. Thus, even a simple musical listening experience carries within it the presence of human action and human agency, and can facilitate feelings of empathy and social bonding. This chapter elaborates upon and extends the argument in relation to creative, interactive music-therapy. It suggests that the situation of shared music-making is a sophisticated example of the potential of music to express emotion and stimulate empathetic understanding.

This chapter discusses the neurobiology of affiliative behavior and social bonding in prairie voles using the monogamous prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) as a model system. It focuses on the roles of the neuropeptides oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP), and the effects of stress on social bonding and parental care. However, it should be recognized that these neuropeptides do not work in a vacuum, but are simply the most well-characterized systems in a complex network of factors and circuits that regulate these complex behaviors. The chapter briefly discusses some implications of these findings for translational research on human social behavior.

This essay describes neurobiological and neuroendocrine mechanisms that are implicated in human caregiving. Anatomical and biochemical systems that first appeared in the evolutionary transition from reptiles to mammals allowed the emergence of mammalian sociality. Human behaviors are characterized by symbiotic and reciprocal interactions, which are necessary for successful caregiving. The autonomic nervous system, and especially the mammalian changes in the parasympathetic system, provides an essential neural platform for social behavior. Especially critical to coordinating the features of positive sociality are neuropeptides including oxytocin and vasopressin. These neuropeptides modulate the mammalian autonomic nervous system to foster the expression of social behaviors and, when adaptive, defensive behaviors. Oxytocin, the same peptide that regulates various aspects of mammalian reproduction including birth, lactation and maternal behavior, is also involved in the beneficial and reciprocal effects of caregiving on physiology, behavior and health.

There has been limited knowledge of the neurobiology of social attachment and the cognitive processes involved, despite the fact that social relationship is a human trait that is given importance across cultures. This chapter examines social bonding between adults, such as romantic attachment between lovers, using various animal models that all feature selective, long-lasting pair-bond formation and a clear onset of the formation of social bonds, and which allow identification and manipulation of factors that either prevent or facilitate bond formation in the laboratory. Discussions suggest that the neurobiology underlying pair bonding could involve the same pathways required by other forms of motivation, like those in behavioural paradigms of conditioned reinforcement. Social bonding is seen as enabling positive affect in children and socially acceptable adult behaviours.

This chapter focuses on archaeological research and its role in explaining the transformation from wolf to dog, addressing why this topic is controversial: the tendency to identify wolf remains found in archaeological sites as evidence of either interlopers or human killing overshadows the alternate possibility of social bonding between humans and wolves. This probably has prevented appreciation of considerable early evidence of relationships between humans and wolves before the latter became sufficiently phenotypically distinct (“doglike”) to be recognized as domestic animals shaped by humans. Some archaeologists do not acknowledge the possibility that humans interacted with and coevolved with wolves for thousands of years without generating significant phenotypic change in either species, and thus early wolves living with or cooperatively hunting with humans probably go unrecognized by scholars looking only at obvious physical changes.

This chapter reviews the basic arguments related to evolutionary claims for music. In particular, it describes the theory of evolution by natural selection. Before entertaining some possible evolutionary views of music's origins, first it considers two pertinent complicating points of views. One view is that music is a form of nonadaptive pleasure seeking (NAPS). A second view is that music is an evolutionary vestige. It then measures the adaptive value of music. Of the various proposals concerning a possible evolutionary origin for music, eight broad theories can be identified: mate selection, social cohesion, group effort, perceptual development, motor skill development, conflict reduction, safe time passing and transgenerational communication. There are four types of evidence considered in presenting a case for the evolutionary origins of music. Next, it reports some of the archaeological, anthropological, and ethological facts. Moreover, it explores some of the evolutionary arguments that have been advanced to account for the origins of language. The evidence on music and social bonding is shown. Furthermore, a discussion on music and social function, social bonding and hormones, oxytocin and the biology of social bonding, and mood regulation is provided.

This chapter discusses the function of music in achieving collective action and group cohesion. It helps structure time, synchronize body movements, and pace work. Music is a tool for social bonding; it communicates emotional experiences and establishes a shared meaning among listeners. Humanity in general has witnessed how music has played a central role in staging revolutions and creating culture all across the globe. Music, in this context, mirrors traditions, expresses values and creates culture. The use of music is also widespread in different fields and disciplines of study. For instance, music is used for social control and to target people for commerce. It also plays an important role in film and advertising, and has therapeutic applications, whether self-administered or administered by a professional practitioner.

This chapter summarizes the main conclusions of the book and present a preliminary model of how crying (much similar music) has developed during the evolution of mankind and has expanded to social bonding and even morality. The chapter emphasizes the strong and remarkable correspondence with what we know about the functions of the neurohormone oxytocin. This substance also is important for the mother-child bond, but also has been associated with romantic relationships, social bonding and mutual trust and moral behaviors, such as generosity.

This chapter explores the social world of schoolgirls and young women who consume contemporary divination as a form of social bonding. It considers the significance of divinatory practices from a female perspective and how contemporary divination provides young women and girls with a range of choices that meet their aesthetic, social, and entertainment interests while allowing them to “play with the occult” with peers. It also examines the feminized patterns and strategies of consumption, along with the use of the Internet, often accessed through mobile phones, to maintain social ties. Finally, it stresses the role of print media, especially magazines and manga, in understanding the increase of interest in divination and the occult among girls and young women.

This chapter reviews the origins of language by appealing to a “quartet of characteristics” deemed crucial to the hominin line’s special linguistic evolution: Bipedalism, manual dexterity, neoteny, and social bonding. It proposes that a platform for language evolution was created by the quartet, outlines steps which may have occurred, and analyzes how the ongoing quartet of human characteristics shaped the aspects of human cognition. The chapter suggests that human language evolved gradually within a unique context which included bipedalism, manual dexterity, neoteny, and social bonding. It shows that the features of cortical control, lexical mapping, recursion, and perspective marking constitute the cognitive underpinnings for human language.

This chapter examines some of the unique dimensions of friendship and intimacy between men in the Marshall Islands. Drawing primarily on the views and personal experiences of a group of three Marshallese men, including one in his sixties named “Robert,” it considers friendships and romantic relations with kakōļ, a social category or identity in the Marshalls that often gets confused with the English word “gay.” It also discusses intimacy between men in the Marshall Islands within the framework of close friendship and social bonding, with particular emphasis on jerā (intimate friendships between two men or two women) and jerāship and their meanings.

This chapter examines the role of endorphins in social bonding in humans and non-human primates. After reviewing the evidence from non-primate mammals and the issues that arise from focusing on rodent-based models of social bonding, the chapter turns to a discussion of the brain opioid theory of social attachment. More specifically, it analyses the suggestion that the endogenous opioids are one of the missing links in the story of primate and human bonding by maintaining long-term relationships and rearing psychologically healthy, socially adept human beings. It also considers the link between endogenous opioids and genetics and the role of endogenous opioids in addiction, pro-social behaviour, and mental health disorders. Finally, it describes the use of functional scanning techniques and pharmacogenetics in investigating the link between the endogenous opioid system and social behaviour.

This chapter considers two possible alternative functional explanations for the evolution of music within the hominin lineage. These are the role of music in mate choice and mating and its role in social bonding. This chapter suggests that the original function of music is most likely associated with social bonding once group sizes became too large to be adequately bonded using grooming alone. It also contends that music served a natural bridge to language as language became inevitable as a mechanism for group bonding and cohesion.

Exercise, broadly construed, is a cultural universal—from ceremonial rituals to team sports, people everywhere get together to move together. This chapter investigates whether and how such activities serve a social bonding function, as has been long claimed in the social scientific literature. Specifically, it explores the social bonding effects of exercise “highs” and behavioral coordination. Reciprocal effects of bonding on exercise motivation and pain and fatigue thresholds are considered also. This novel inquiry integrates evolutionary, neuroscientific, psychological, and anthropological approaches to generate an explanatory account of a pervasive feature of everyday life that cross-cuts cultural domains as varied as religion, sports, and play.

Humans’ social agency manifests within large, interconnected social networks. These networks are established and maintained via a number of group behavioral practices including sports, religious ritual, language, and music-based activities. This chapter explores the example of dance—movement to music—as a ubiquitous and ancient human activity which may serve the important adaptive function of facilitating the creation and strengthening of social bonds between interacting group members. This “social bonding hypothesis” of dance is described in the context of large-scale human sociality through a review of the role of synchrony (matched movement in time) in enhancing social closeness; an exploration of the specific role of music in moving and bonding humans; and a discussion of how a coupled conceptualization of music and dance (termed “musiking”) is a relevant lens through which we might develop empirical and theoretical understandings of foundations of our social agency.

From an ecological perspective, understanding the form, the structure, of autobiographical memory requires examining the functions it serves in human life. The chapter begins with a review of the distant and then the more recent history of the functional perspective on autobiographical memory. That done, the bulk of the chapter addresses current controversies that arise when taking a functional approach. These include: (1) defining basic functions versus reasons for, or uses of, remembering, (2) considering whether there is one fundamental function, and, in contrast, (3) identifying possible candidates above and beyond the three broad functions commonly seen in the literature (i.e., self, social, directive). The functional approach to autobiographical memory continues to provide an important alternative, or complement, to mechanistic views of human remembering.