{"title":"Why not reduce reactive aggression too?","authors":"Antonio Benítez-Burraco","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25100605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100605","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Grooming is one strong mechanism allowing primate groups to grow larger and more cohesive, but a reduction in reactive aggression responses can be expected to have contributed to this trend too. There is indeed a partial overlap between the neurobiology of grooming and the neurobiology of reactive aggression.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e165"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dynamic unpredictability in grouping.","authors":"Phyllis C Lee, Karen B Strier","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25100587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100587","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Dunbar presents an intriguing analysis of variance in primate group sizes, and social glue's (grooming) relationship to cognitive evolution. This focus on primates with consistent and stable grouping excludes perspectives on the evolution of grouping beyond predation and competition. The analysis raises important questions about variation, dynamic sizes, and the conservation implications of variance for primate population extinction vulnerabilities.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e174"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Elisabetta Palagi, Fausto Caruana, Gordon Burghardt
{"title":"Play and laughter: overlooked pillars of social cohesion. Commentary proposal for structural and cognitive mechanisms of group cohesion in primates.","authors":"Elisabetta Palagi, Fausto Caruana, Gordon Burghardt","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25100393","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100393","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While grooming and other forms of physical bonding are crucial for stress management, social play and laughter deserve equal recognition as tools for both stress relief and the reinforcement of social relationships. They play a pivotal role in the development of motor and social skills and serves as a foundational behavior in species that rely on cooperation and alliance-building.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e178"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Meta-cognition for music as a solution to the fragmentation problem.","authors":"Psyche Loui, Elizabeth H Margulis","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25101763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25101763","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Meta-cognition enhances the social bonding hypothesis for musicality, integrating imagination, episodic simulation, causal inference, and inhibition. Music fosters group cohesion by engaging the endogenous opioid system, supporting intergroup understanding through vivid mental imagery, and facilitating socio-affective fiction. Additionally, causal inference enables contextual interpretation of music, while inhibition refines musical coordination and executive function, reinforcing cognitive flexibility for cooperative social behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e175"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metacognition serves allostasis and co-evolves with the social brain.","authors":"Valery Krupnik","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25100563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100563","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this commentary, I suggest a complementary view to the target paper's idea that primate social metacognition evolved as an adaptation to living in large groups. I present metacognition as a necessary step in the development of complex allostatic systems and suggest that intrinsic and social metacognition are dissociable, which can be studied in the mammalian default mode network.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e173"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unpacking social complexity.","authors":"Robin Dunbar","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25100824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100824","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>I first summarise the argument in the target article so as to make the main points clear. I then address a number of major misunderstandings (mainly in relation to the social brain hypothesis), consider some specific issues that require clarification, and finally identify points that would merit more detailed consideration. I conclude with a list of possible future projects.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e190"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What makes social abilities sophisticated? Not recursive mentalising.","authors":"Ian A Apperly","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25100526","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100526","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To explain human social sophistication, and proximal phylogenetic steps leading to it, Dunbar claims that mentalising expands to increasingly high levels of recursion. However, the evidential basis for this claim is weak, exposing both a limitation in Dunbar's account and in the field's current understanding of social sophistication.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e164"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fairness expectations scaffolded the evolution of larger groups.","authors":"Oded Ritov, Colin R Jacobs, Jan M Engelmann","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25100459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100459","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We propose that the emergence of relationship-based social expectations and their evolution into fairness expectations played a key role in the size and cohesion of hominin societies. One of the central challenges of group living is the need to create and sustain stable and mutually beneficial patterns of cooperation. By regulating collaborative interactions, social expectations make group living less stressful.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e180"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carsten K W De Dreu, Esther Herrmann, Friederike Range, Martin Surbeck, Roman Wittig
{"title":"Group-mindedness as evolved solution to deal with group-living.","authors":"Carsten K W De Dreu, Esther Herrmann, Friederike Range, Martin Surbeck, Roman Wittig","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X2510040X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X2510040X","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Challenges of group-living include foundational problems of cooperation and coordination that extend beyond anthropoid primates and may potentially be managed through evolved group-mindedness rather than expanded neocortical size and enhanced capacities for executive functions.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e167"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145627834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dennis Papadopoulos, Kristin Andrews, Jenny Michlich
{"title":"Removing the glass ceilings: diverse mechanisms for social cohesion.","authors":"Dennis Papadopoulos, Kristin Andrews, Jenny Michlich","doi":"10.1017/S0140525X25100460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25100460","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Dunbar suggests that social stressors set \"glass ceilings\" on the evolution of mammalian group size and cohesion. We argue that this glass ceiling narrative conceals three contentious anthropocentric assumptions. First, large stable groups would always be beneficial. Second, grooming is an indicator for maintaining group cohesion. Third, group size is primarily limited by cognitive or behavioral incapacity. We challenge all three assumptions.</p>","PeriodicalId":8698,"journal":{"name":"Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"48 ","pages":"e179"},"PeriodicalIF":13.7,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145628146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}