Language is a symbolic system, but it is often used metarepresentationally for indexical conformations of communal sharing, iconic conformations of authority ranking, and concrete operation one-to-one correspondence conformations of equality matching. Speakers of English, Mooré, Chinese, and, apparently, Proto-Indo-European and Turkish, rely on words whose original, nonsocial-relational meaning concerns dimensions or magnitudes. There are several reasons why typological study of lexicons is illuminating with regard to conformations. Language always provides the opportunity to convergently validate the other kinds of evidence available for any society. Also, there may be conformational dimensions apparent in language that are not easily seen in other media. Language also conforms third-party relationships that are otherwise difficult to conform, and makes it possible to formulate complex ideas about conformations. Finally, language provides enormous samples of metarepresentations of conformations, permitting analyses that could not be done with the smaller available samples of conformations themselves.

This chapter considers why conformation systems matter for scholars studying any aspect of human sociality; the importance of the book’s compilation of many hundreds of instances of conformations; how each of the four evolved dispositions for conforming constitutes a niche for the cultural evolution of congruent practices, artifacts, art, and architecture; and the selective forces on cultural practices and institutions in those niches.

This chapter discusses being in front of others, processing in first position, and having temporal precedence to conform authority ranking, as in military protocol; number of statues at a temple, number of heads or arms on a statue, number of names of a deity, and plural pronouns, and numerosity also conform authority ranking. Ancient rulers associated themselves with statues of the largest and most powerful animals, or with actual elephants and lions, conforming authority ranking by force and mass. The chapter’s conclusion recounts the author’s discovery of the analog magnitude system (AMS), which is the neurocognitive substrate for all eight of the dimensions and magnitudes whose conformational uses w have considered so far. The AMS is also the substrate for processing relative luminosity and relative loudness, so I realized I should find out whether luminosity and/or loudness often conforms authority ranking.

This chapter considers conformation of communal sharing by means of consubstantial assimilation: making essential substances or surfaces of bodies alike, or contact between bodies, or engaging in synchronous rhythmic movement of the torso and limbs; blood sacrifice; classic anthropological theories of commensalism; and milk kinship. In a number of cultures, drinking alcohol together creates strong commitments. Among North American Indians, smoking the sacred pipe together is a way to make peace or cement bonds. In Homeric Greece and in other Bronze Age and early Iron Age societies around the Mediterranean, men created host–guest bonds by hospitably welcoming and feeding a travelling stranger, and exchanging gifts. In Africa and elsewhere, there are practices in which two men each cut themselves and bleed into a vessel in which they mix the blood, and then drink it. This creates extremely strong commitments to mutual aid in blood brotherhood.

The theory posits that conformation systems are the channel for children to discover their community’s implementations of each relational model. Hence, children seek, initiate, attend, and take note of conformations. Consequently, conformation systems are the media for cultural reproduction, transformation, and resistance to social systems. Another point to consider is that conformations may or may not be intentional, be done by choice, or be in conscious awareness. Also a big issue is the conceptualization of felicity conditions for conformations: When are people receptive to a given conformation, and when are they offended by – and reject – a given conformation? Another aspect of conformation systems that we have only touched on, but that merits extensive research, is that they, on the one hand, often depend on available technology, and, on the other hand, impel the invention, diffusion, and development of technologies that facilitate, amplify, and hence increase the efficacy of conformations.

People conform communal sharing by making their body surfaces the same through body modification, body marking, dress, hair, adornment, or uniforms; also, circumcision and clitoridectomy, as well as initiation rites. Synchronized rhythmic motion is also consubstantial assimilation. Preverbal infants recognize that synchronous rhythmic movement conforms communal sharing, and so does mouth-to-mouth food sharing. When they see agents do that, infants expect the agents to help or comfort each other. One implication of infant innate knowledge of relational models and their conformation systems is that social development consists of externalizing innate knowledge and dispositions, which requires that the infant learn the cultural complements of their innate relational models. The phylogenetic precursors to consubstantial assimilation include grooming in primates and affiliative licking in other mammals. Conformations often involve multiple recursive cycles, generating not only common knowledge, but common emotions, motives, and moral sentiments.