Hostname: page-component-857557d7f7-d5hhr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-29T03:39:55.566Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Primates’ social cognitive bonding mechanisms are more complex than we thought, yet not quite human–lessons from great ape triadic social bonding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2025

Wouter Wolf Open the ORCID record for Wouter Wolf [Opens in a new window]
Wouter Wolf*
Affiliation:
Utrecht University , Utrecht, The Netherlands w.wolf@uu.nl
*
*Corresponding author.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The current manuscript rightly points out that non-human primates evolved complex social cognitive skills to maintain weaker social ties. However, these capacities are likely more expansive than currently proposed: research shows that apes behave more socially to those with whom they experience similar things, suggesting that they possess some precursor of humans’ capacity to bond through shared experiences.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 48 , 2025 , e188
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology, 23(4), 363–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Artinger, L., Clapham, L., Hunt, C., Meigs, M., Milord, N., Sampson, B., & Forrester, S. A. (2006). The social benefits of intramural sports. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 43(1), 69–86. https://doi.org/10.2202/1949-6605.1572 Google Scholar
Bosson, J. K., Johnson, A. B., Niederhoffer, K., & Swann, W. B. (2006). Interpersonal chemistry through negativity: Bonding by sharing negative attitudes about others. Personal Relationships, 13(2), 135–150. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2006.00109.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charles, S. J., van Mulukom, V., Brown, J. E., Watts, F., Dunbar, R. I. M., & Farias, M. (2021). United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect. PLOS ONE, 16(1), e0242546. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242546 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cirelli, L. K., Wan, S. J., Spinelli, C., & Trainor, L. J. (2017). Effects of interpersonal movement synchrony on infant helping behaviors. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 34(3), 319–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. E. (1991). Grounding in communication. In Resnick, L. B., Levine, J. M., & Teasley, S. D. (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 127–149). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10096-006 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dabbish, L. A. (2008). Jumpstarting Relationships with Online Games: Evidence from a Laboratory Investigation. Proceedings of the 2008 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 4. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Depping, A. E., & Mandryk, R. L. (2017). Cooperation and Interdependence: How Multiplayer Games Increase Social Closeness. Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, 449–461. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1145/3116595.3116639 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, P. (1957). Meaning. The Philosophical Review, 66(3), 377–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hove, M. J., & Risen, J. L. (2009). It’s all in the timing: Interpersonal synchrony increases affiliation. Social Cognition, 27(6), 949–960. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2009.27.6.949 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, E., Launay, J., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2015). The ice-breaker effect: Singing mediates fast social bonding. Royal Society Open Science, 2(10), 150221. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150221 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Searle, J. (1992). The rediscovery of the mind. Cambridge, MA: Bradford books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shteynberg, G., Hirsh, J. B., Wolf, W., Bargh, J. A., Boothby, E. J., Colman, A. M., Echterhoff, G., & Rossignac-Milon, M. (2023). Theory of collective mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(11), 1019–1031. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.06.009 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Singh, P., Tewari, S., Kesberg, R., Karl, J. A., Bulbulia, K., & Fischer, R. (2020). Time investments in rituals are associated with social bonding, affect and subjective health: A longitudinal study of Diwali in two Indian communities. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375(1805), 20190430. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0430 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Siposova, B., Tomasello, M., & Carpenter, M. (2018). Communicative eye contact signals a commitment to cooperate for young children. Cognition, 179, 192–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.010 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. (2019). Becoming human. A theory of ontogeny. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Weinstein, D., Launay, J., Pearce, E., Dunbar, R. I. M., & Stewart, L. (2016). Singing and social bonding: Changes in connectivity and pain threshold as a function of group size. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37(2), 152–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.10.002 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, W., Launay, J., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2015). Joint attention, shared goals, and social bonding. British Journal of Psychology, 107(2), 322–337. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12144 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wolf, W., & Tomasello, M. (2019). Visually attending to a video together facilitates great ape social closeness. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286(1907), 20190488. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0488 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wolf, W., & Tomasello, M. (2020a). Human children, but not great apes, become socially closer by sharing an experience in common ground. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 199, 104930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104930 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, W., & Tomasello, M. (2020b). Watching a video together creates social closeness between children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 189, 12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104712 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wolf, W., & Tomasello, M. (2023). A shared intentionality account of uniquely human social bonding. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 20(2), 264–275.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zheng, J., Veinott, E., Bos, N., Olson, J. S., & Olson, G. M. (2002). Trust without Touch: Jumpstarting Long-Distance Trust with Initial Social Activities. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 6. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar