The Evolutionary Psychology Of Human Friendship - Robin Dunbar

The difference between men's and women's friendships is, for a woman, it matters who you are, not what you are, i.e. what you do. For blokes, the first question blokes usually ask each other is, "What do you do?" And the question is because it matters what you are, not who you are. Who you are is completely substitutable. (wind blows)

What is the social brain hypothesis for people that aren't familiar with it?

The social brain hypothesis is really an explanation for why monkeys and apes have much bigger brains than anybody else, uh, in the natural world, and why we, if you like, as the top end of the monkeys and apes, uh, family tree, have exceedingly big brains. And, uh, the question is, what do we use these big brains for? And the social brain hypothesis says we use it to manage our relatively large, very complicated societies, and it's that that allows us really to hold these things together, uh, as a coherent village, uh, to borrow an analogy, rather than sort of scattered individuals who never talk to each other.

Why wouldn't it be the case that we got bigger brains so that we could throw better or so that we could talk in more complex ways or so that we could grow cool hairstyles or do art?

Uh, most of those things, um, aren't that computationally demanding. Throwing is probably (laughs) the most complicated of those. Uh, and it's true that we do throw better than, uh, any of the other monkeys and apes, but that's really mainly because we've... our arms are freed off, uh, from, uh... because we don't walk on them, obviously, whereas monkey's and apes', um, arms have, are used for walking on. Um, but we're... our aiming isn't necessarily better than other species that chuck stuff out like spitting cobras or, uh, archer fish that, uh, uh, spit out jets of water and, and knock insects off branches. They actually probably (laughs) are more accurate than we are. No, most of these things, you know, even walking requires some, uh, computation by the brain, some calculations. But what seems to be really important for monkeys and apes is the fact that they live in these very dynamic social environments in which relationships between other people are constantly changing through time. And it's being able to manage those, not just the memory problem. It's being able to manage and predict what's going to happen in these relationships and how to integrate effectively with them within a social system 'cause the big problem you have is, if you're too rude to everybody else, they have a nasty habit of either clobbering you or just walking away and s- you know, going to live somewhere else with the over their shoulder comment that you can look after yourself if you're that clever. Um, so it, it... it's the skills of diplomacy as much as anything else. These are actually very sophisticated... And computationally, we've shown with neuroimaging experiments, brain scanning experiments, that they're much more demanding in terms of neural recruitment than, say, ordinary, um, logical thinking in terms of sort of standard causality, A causes B, as it were. Um, and I think part of the problem is because what we're having to do w- with physical things... You know, if I, if I throw my spear in this way, will I get it to end up at that target? Um, those are things in, in, in the real world. But the, the social world, what we do is build a kind of mirror, um, world in our minds, uh, peopled by avatars, which, which are based obviously on the folk out there. Um, but we're... it's... it... What we're doing is trying to, in our minds, trying to understand somebody else's mind. And, and it's... That's where it starts to get complicated because if, if I, uh, uh, um, got to, um, try and figure out what you're thinking about somebody else thinking, who in turn is thinking about somebody else elsewhere, uh, in order to, uh, you know, sort of decide which pub we're going to or something as simple as that-