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social bonding
Also known as: social bonds
Facts (12)
Sources
Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution frontiersin.org 12 facts
claimThe interpersonal and prosocial effects of psilocybin likely mediated the expansion of social bonding mechanisms, including laughter, singing, dancing, storytelling, and religion.
claimThe collective use of psychedelics may have facilitated complex sociality and communication in early human groups by enriching social life, bolstering rhetorical activity, managing group tension through emotional catharsis, and strengthening social bonds by triggering the endorphin system.
claimExtended grooming behaviors that stimulate endogenous opioid mechanisms to enhance social bonding include, in sequential order: laughter (chorusing), singing (without words), dancing, storytelling, and religion.
claimDunbar (2017, 2020) suggests that shamanic-type religions based on trance-dancing evolved between the appearance of archaic humans (Heidelbergensians) around 500,000 years ago and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) around 200,000 years ago as a mechanism to enhance social bonding by triggering the endorphin system.
referencePearce, Launay, and Dunbar (2015) published 'The ice-breaker effect: singing mediates fast social bonding' in Royal Society Open Science, demonstrating that singing facilitates social bonding.
claimIf psychedelics engendered mental states with adaptive effects on health, social bonding, and decision-making, this would have led to subsequent genetic and cultural selection for the ability and motivation to alter consciousness through non-drug means that promote salutogenesis, sociality, and creativity.
claimThe psychedelic instrumentalization model hypothesizes that psychedelic use is primarily associated with specific functional contexts, including healing, social bonding, socialization, and decision-making rituals.
claimPsychedelic instrumentalization acted as an enabling factor in the development of the human socio-cognitive niche by mediating the expansion of ritual alterations of consciousness, healing, social bonding, and decision-making activities, which accelerated the spread of biological components of sociality, cognition, and communication skills in the human lineage.
perspectivePsychedelic use may have declined in modern human societies because safer, more effective, or more convenient methods to access altered states of consciousness and support social bonding—such as music and religion—have become integral parts of the human niche.
claimThe interpersonal and prosocial effects of psilocybin may have mediated the expansion of social bonding mechanisms such as laughter, music, storytelling, and religion, thereby favoring selection for prosociality in the human lineage.
claimRitual chanting, music, and dance were developed to induce euphoria and ecstasy, known as altered states of consciousness (ASC), which enhance health, well-being, social bonding, and creativity even without the ingestion of psychedelics.
claimCharles et al. (2020) found that religious rituals increase social bonding and pain threshold, as reported in a PsyArXiv preprint.