Primate neocortex size predicts social group size
Evidence
L. Aiello and R. Dunbar, “Neocortex Size, Group Size, and the Evolution of Language,” Current Anthropology 34, no. 2 (1993), 184–93, retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743982; R.I.M. Dunbar, “Co-evolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, no. 4 (2010), 681–735, doi:10.1017/S0140525X00032325. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 895
Categorization
- DEFINE: This is the classic ‘social brain hypothesis’ citation — Dunbar’s finding that brain size scaled with group size drove language evolution.
Related
- Larger social groups require proportionally more brain tissue to manage (similarity 0.82)