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What a big brain we have for all the small talk we make. It's an evolutionary riddle that at long last makes sense in this intriguing book about what gossip has done for our talkative species. Psychologist Robin Dunbar looks at gossip as an instrument of social order and cohesion--much like the endless grooming with which our primate cousins tend to their social relationships.
Apes and monkeys, humanity's closest kin, differ from other animals in the intensity of these relationships. All their grooming is not so much about hygiene as it is about cementing bonds, making friends, and influencing fellow primates. But for early humans, grooming as a way to social success posed a problem: given their large social groups of 150 or so, our earliest ancestors would have had to spend almost half their time grooming one another--an impossible burden. What Dunbar suggests--and his research, whether in the realm of primatology or in that of gossip, confirms--is that humans developed language to serve the same purpose, but far more efficiently. It seems there is nothing idle about chatter, which holds together a diverse, dynamic group--whether of hunter-gatherers, soldiers, or workmates.
Anthropologists have long assumed that language developed in relationships among males during activities such as hunting. Dunbar's original and extremely interesting studies suggest otherwise: that language in fact evolved in response to our need to keep up to date with friends and family. We needed conversation to stay in touch, and we still need it in ways that will not be satisfied by teleconferencing, email, or any other communication technology. As Dunbar shows, the impersonal world of cyberspace will not fulfill our primordial need for face-to-face contact.
From the nit-picking of chimpanzees to our chats at coffee break, from neuroscience to paleoanthropology, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language offers a provocative view of what makes us human, what holds us together, and what sets us apart.
- Sales Rank: #587297 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Harvard University Press
- Published on: 1998-10-01
- Released on: 1998-08-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .56" w x 5.50" l, .63 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 242 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Why is it that among all the primates, only humans have language? According to Professor Robin Dunbar's new book, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, humans gossip because we don't groom each other. Dunbar builds his argument in a lively discussion that touches on such varied topics as the behavior of gelada baboons, Darwin's theory of evolution, computer-generated poetry, and the significance of brain size. He begins with the social organization of the great apes. These animals live in small groups and maintain social cohesion through almost constant grooming activities. Grooming is a way to forge alliances, establish hierarchy, offer comfort, or make apology. Once a population expands beyond a certain number, however, it becomes impossible for each member to maintain constant physical contact with every other member of the group. Considering the large groups in which human beings have found it necessary to live, Dunbar posits that we developed language as a substitute for physical intimacy.
Whether or not you accept Dunbar's premise, his book is worth reading, if only for its animated prose and wealth of scientific information. An obvious choice for science buffs, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language is a wonderful book for anyone with an inquiring mind and an interest in what makes the world go round.
From Library Journal
Dunbar (psychology, Univ. of Liverpool) has written a provocative book about the sociology of language use. He begins with a discussion of primate behavior, physiology, and Darwinian evolution. Then he shows the importance of the theory of mind and intentionality in discussing the difference between other species of primates and Homo sapiens. He disagrees with Piaget's ideas on human development and develops a different interpretation. He explains the beginning and uses of language as grooming and gossip, highlighted by the abilities and limits of language as part of human life. In the last chapter he gives some implications of his ideas for changing and understanding social dynamics. This fascinating study is recommended for language and psychology collections.?Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
It may seem a stretch to connect the origin of speech with the grooming behavior of baboons, but Dunbar's research has persuaded him of such a link. This intriguing book presents his thesis, which he formulated after noting a relationship between maximum group size and the ratio of neocortical tissue to total brain volume. Dunbar then extrapolates to humans, proposing 150 as the upper range of people any one person can personally maintain relationships with via our equivalent of grooming: gossipy chitchat. He admits this will strike most readers as an absurdly low figure, but he argues the case, in evolutionary biological terms, in an elucidating and entertaining manner. How language began fascinates most of us, and consistently delightful are Dunbar's excursions into paleoanthropological anatomy, exigencies of nomadic living, philology of root languages, and the conversational styles at cocktail parties. A relaxed, concise presentation of an evolving theory of linguistic evolution. Gilbert Taylor
Most helpful customer reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
From scratching to speaking
By Stephen A. Haines
Many theories on the origin of language have been offered in recent years. They range from divine gift to something derived from hunting gestures. With no fossil evidence available, all are speculative and defensible only by logical derivation. Dunbar has offered the most likely scenario for human language. Using persuasive evolutionary roots, tied securely to observed practices of our primate cousins, he builds a coherent picture. While the foundation rests on primate grooming practices, Dunbar shows how this activity led humans developing social interactions to become language. Because we, alone among the primates, also evolved the necessary physical equipment for speech, we are the ones who produced complex languages. Dunbar's account is presented in lively style, showing his own language skills to the full.
It may seem a twisted path from scratching in your neighbour's fur to the complexities of human speech, but Dunbar clearly shows us how evolution traversed it. Part of the story lies in our adapting an upright stance and bipedal locomotion. The enlarged human brain, already given a boost by primates having a proportionally larger brain than other animals, also contributed. Our needs drove us to greater mobility leaving less time for interactive grooming. The brain's demand for resources turned grooming into a waste of valuable food gathering time. Speech was the means of retaining contact and the grooming habit was lost. The most important food gathering wasn't the hunt for meat, but the gathering of vegetables. Meat supplied only a small portion of the nutritional bulk compared to the vegetables garnered by the community's females. From this reality, Dunbar proposes speech developed more rapidly in females than in males.
Dunbar's analysis doesn't stop at the edge of the African forest, but probes into parties, pub conversations and business meetings. No facet of human verbal communication has been overlooked in this survey of our speech habits. One element of our social structure lies in the size of our personal "communities". Research shows that primate communities share a viable group size of about 150 individuals. Whatever your living circumstances, a careful count will show you probably interact closely with no more than that many other people. Dunbar shows that even in the urban environment, this figure holds. It isn't the number of neighbours we have, but how many people we communicate with personally. This figure derives from deep primate evolutionary conditions in which 150 was the likely group size in which we could develop effective social skills. "Gossip", in Dunbar's view is simply a synonym for social communication. We talk more about people than we do about philosophy - or anthropology.
In conclusion, Dunbar views the current communication environment with some caution. He notes that the rise of electronic communication hasn't replaced the practices we developed on the African savanna. All the promises of closer ties with distant people don't seem to have brought us together. He notes that e-mail and "chat rooms" are rife with rage and hate messages. People insult one another with the impunity of distance. Our verbal communication is still limited to that 150 member-sized group. Dunbar vividly shows how old ideas of human evolution must be seriously reconsidered. We can't reconstruct the steps of evolution, but we can investigate the possible scenarios to draw the most logical conclusions. Dunbar does this with wit and fine scholarship. It's a thorough and effective analysis deserving close attention. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Some Interesting Tidbits Along the Way
By Eric Berglund
Besides the general argument that we needed to develop language to make more friends than we could make grooming, Dunbar has some interesting observations that illustrate the breadth of his work. Here are a few:
1. Monkeys developed the ability to eat unripe fruit, dooming the ancestors of apes, chimps, and humans to starvation unless we came up with a response, since we depended on ripe fruit for survival.
Our ancestors' response was to move out of the central forest and into the forest fringe, which made us more vulnerable to predators. We responded to THAT in three ways: selecting for a larger size, forming larger groups, and standing up (which allows better scanning for predators and less exposure to the heat of the sun).
2. There are lots of social species, but to truly form small-group alliances, a species must be able to imagine what other members are thinking--and thus whether a particular other is a reliable friend or likely foe in the intragroup competition for food, safety, ..., etc. Dunbar calls this a Theory of Mind, and says that only primates seem to display it regularly.
Only a Theory of Mind allows for deception ("he thinks that I think, but actually I..."), and possible deception means that there must be a reliable way to build alliances.
3. Females of many species look for an expensive commitment from prospective mates--an elaborate nest, for example, that takes a long time to build. Their implied reasoning is that even if he's tempted to stray, he won't want to go through the hassle of building another big nest. Having to groom your closest friends and allies is the same kind of commitment.
4. Dunbar's grad students have done studies of overheard conversations and newspaper contents, and generally discover that approximately 2/3 of a human communication is gossip about oneself or others.
5. His theory was inspired by the correlation across primate species of group size, clique size, brain size relative to body size, and neocortex size relative to brain size. According to the graphs, the natural human group size is 150 people. (His arguments attempting to prove this hypothesis are interesting, but not among his most convincing.)
This is a fun book, the kind of scientific speculation that lays out a broad theory and invites others to disprove it or come up with something better...
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A Classic, Still Exciting and Highly Informative
By Herbert Gintis
The field of sociobiology leaped into our consciousness with the seminal volume by that name, written by the famous naturalist and expert on ant societies, Edward O. Wilson. Wilson was pilloried by social scientists and political activists, who considered any biological perspective on human society to be a sacrilege (see the beautiful and stirring account of Wilson's travails in Ullica Segerstråle, Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond. Oxford University Press, 2000). Sociobiology is founded on the insight that that there are many social species, not just humans, and that the structure of social life is a major force in the tempo and pace of genetic change in social species.
In humans, social life is embodied in cultural forms that can be elaborated upon and passed from generation to generation. Thus sociobiology applied to humans leads to gene-culture coevolutionary theory, which studies the dialectical interaction between hominid genetic structure, the cultural evolution based on this genetic structure, and the effect of new levels of cultural sophistication on continued genetic evolution ---see Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus W. Feldman, Cultural Transmission and Evolution ( Princeton University Press, 1981) and Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (University of Chicago Press, 1985).
One aspect of gene-culture evolution in hominids is the continual increase in brain size and complexity from hominid origins to the present. Large brains are extremely costly to evolve and maintain. Large brain size required costly restructuring of the human birth canal and led to neoteny---birth before fetal maturation---which entails extended child-rearing and protection. Moreover, the brain requires ten times the energy of the average bodily organ, and uses about 20% of total calories consumed. What could counterbalancing advantages of large brains be?
The conventional answer to the riddle of the large brain was the capacity to use tools skillfully, and the value of communication in facilitating mutualistic cooperation. Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten ---Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans (Clarendon Press, 1988)--- deepened the explanation by adding that there are severely conflicts of interest among members of a social group, and a large brain will help a group member to form alliances and understand complex social forces that might well increase his biological fitness. This insight is both correct and quite valuable, but it seems to imply that large brains confer no group-level fitness benefits, but merely consist of an expensive "arms race" the hurts the species as a whole.
Robin Dunbar's contribution in this book is flows from a statistical relationship described graphically on page 63: There is a very strong correlation between neocortex ratio and mean group size in different genera of anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes and humans). Dunbar argues that there is survival value in larger groups, probably because larger groups can better defend territories and survive cataclysmic events, such as contagious disease and war. However, the complexity of group interactions increases with group size, and a large brain provides individuals with the raw materials for forging strong social ties that permit the group to overcome the purely Machiavellian tendencies described by Witten and Byrne. Language, for Dunbar, is not hypertrophied through the need to deceive, but is appropriate to the task of allowing groups of individuals to make clear subtle and conditional promises, threats, and social descriptions.
What about grooming and gossip? There is strong evidence from observation of monkey and ape behavior that grooming is a major source of group cohesion. It is carried out for many hours a day, the animals love to be groomed, and grooming solidifies cooperative alliances with great regularity. Now humans have no fur, so they cannot groom. Dunbar suggests that gossip performs the same role in humans as grooming in monkeys and apes: both are functional mechanisms for social bonding. I find it hard to take this explanation seriously---it is the sort of just-so story for which evolutionary psychology is routinely criticized (e.g., Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin, "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205 (1979):581-598.) The costs of a large brain are extreme, and the complex adaptations required to facilitate human communication through language and gesture are intricate and costly. It is implausible that an amorphous group-level function such as "group cohesion" could not have been ensured in a far more direct manner.
However, Dunbar suggests a second mechanism, far more concrete, that was offered for the function of gossip by Magnus Enquist and Olle Leimar, "The evolution of cooperation in mobile organisms," Animal Behaviour 45:747-757, 1993. Enquist and Leimar suggest that gossip may serve to maintain social cooperation by allowing individuals to develop good reputations for their altruistic contributions to the group and bad reputations for selfish and free-riding behavior. A good reputation is personally valuable and even fitness enhancing because others will want to form alliances (including marriage) with those who consistently behave altruistically and will shun and isolate those who are selfish and opportunistic.
Of course, if the behavior of each individual were observed by all others, gossip would be unnecessary---each group member could judge for himself. But such is rarely the case. More generally, one or a few individuals will observe the behavior of a group member, and the member's reputation can be formed accurately only if his behavior is transmitted truthfully to the group. This is what truthful gossip does. If the Enquist-Leimar-Dunbar theory of gossip is correct, and I will argue below that it is, we have a very strong function for gossip, perhaps even strong enough to justify the immense costs of language acquisition.
The key point in the reputational theory of gossip is that unless gossip is almost always truthful, it will not be believed, and hence it will not be performed. But why should individuals gossip truthfully, as opposed to simply saying whatever suits the personal needs at the time (as assuredly some people do---witness the Shakespearian tragedies King Lear and Othello)? This is an important and deep question that is not yet fully answered. I believe there is a two-part answer. First, there is an evolved human predisposition to tell the truth; people will of course lie, but most will lie only when the costs of truth-telling are fairly high. Indeed, were this not the case, human language and gestural communication could not have developed: why bother communicating if people simply tell you what is in their best interest to have you believe. Truth-telling is thus a precondition of the physiology and psychology of human linguistic and gestural communication. Second, humans are very good at detecting lies, so it is difficult for a habitual prevaricator to maintain his credibility---see Leda Cosmides, "The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped how Humans Reason? Studies with the Wason Selection Task", Cognition 31 (1989):187-276.
We thus have a tight causal loop involved with human gene-culture coevolution: hominids developed the ability to detect cheaters and the altruistic predisposition to punish anti-social behavior. This led to a vast increase in the value of linguistic and gestural communication, whence the evolution of an elaborate human communicative physiology (see my treatment in "Gene-Culture Coevolution and the Nature of Human Sociality, special issue on Human Niche Construction, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, forthcoming, available on my web site). This capacity for sophisticated and accurate information transmission led to an increased value of gossip as a mechanism of social control, and thence to a further articulation of human cooperative institutions.
The experimental evidence in favor of this view has mushroomed in recent years. First, several studies showed that humans are consummate "indirect reciprocators," willing to cooperate with others who have the reputation for honesty and altruism in collaborative affairs. For a recent overview of the evidence, see M. Milinski, D. Semmann and H.-J. Krambek, "Reputation Helps Solve the 'Tragedy of the Commons' ", Nature 415 (2002):224-226 and Karthik Panchanathan and Robert Boyd, "A Tale of Two Defectors: The Importance of Standing for Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity", Journal of Theoretical Biology 224 (2003):115-126. The role of gossip in promoting reputation-building and indirect reciprocity is demonstrated in a recent article by Ralf D. Sommerfeld, Hans-J"urgen Krambeck, Dirk Semmann and Manfred Milinski, "Gossip as an Alternative for Direct Observation in Games of Indirect Reciprocity," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104,44 (2007):17435-17440.
So, all in all, Dunbar's book is highly innovatory and basically correct, well worth reading even if the reader is up to date on gene-culture coevolution and indirect reciprocity.
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