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The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies
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The evolution of social timing.

Laura Verga1, Sonja A Kotz2, Andrea Ravignani3

  • 1Comparative Bioacoustic Group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands; Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.

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Summary

Sociality and timing are deeply connected in humans and animals. This study proposes a new framework to understand the evolutionary origins of this social timing link across species.

Keywords:
CommunicationComparative neurosciencePhylogenyRhythmSocial interaction

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Comparative Psychology
  • Animal Behavior

Background:

  • Sociality and timing are intrinsically linked in human interactions like turn-taking and synchronized movements.
  • This social timing is also observed in other species, potentially for pleasure and survival.
  • The evolutionary history and reasons for this tight link remain largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To address the lack of an integrative framework for studying the evolution of social timing.
  • To propose a theoretical and empirical framework for testing hypotheses on the evolution of social timing.
  • To establish consistent definitions and species-appropriate paradigms for comparative research.

Main Methods:

  • Outlining a theoretical and empirical framework for evolutionary social timing research.
  • Proposing consistent definitions and species-appropriate paradigms.
  • Identifying representative species and empirical hypotheses for future studies.

Main Results:

  • A novel framework is presented to overcome limitations in current comparative research on social timing.
  • The framework facilitates testing contrasting hypotheses on the evolutionary trajectory of social timing.
  • It integrates cross-species and quantitative approaches for a unified understanding.

Conclusions:

  • The proposed framework aims to build and contrast evolutionary trees of social timing.
  • This research can lead to an integrated empirical-theoretical paradigm for social timing.
  • Ultimately, it seeks to explain the high degree of social coordination observed in humans.