Scientific Evidence for our Social Nature

20+ Proofs for Humanity’s Sociality

The ‘nature vs. nurture’ question has been debated for thousands of years even before English polymath Francis Galen coined the term in 1874. In one way or another, we’ve all watched toddlers dance like their grandparents, children speak using their parents’ gesticulations, teenagers try to stand out by acting like each other (and not like their parents), and citizens reflecting their city and nation’s cultures (even if they deny it).

Today, we understand that both forces are at play — we have natural mechanisms that permit our adaptations to the environments in which we are nurtured. Nonetheless, there is still doubt amongst some who do not grasp just how much we are influenced by our social nature.

If you have already read my piece The Most Influential Social Psychology Experiments of All Time which detailed fifteen of the most compelling experiments detailing our social nature, perhaps you might not need more convincing. If you haven’t read it, yet, or if you are especially scrupulous on this issue, this is for you.

I’ve aggregated 20+ additional studies that have demonstrated the depth and breadth of just how strongly we are socially programmed. The studies are divided into three categories.

• Developmental Psychology: Illustrating how from infancy to adolescence, we have a social nature.
• Neuroscience: Examining neuroanatomical and chemical evidence that we are have social circuitry and tendencies.
• Social Psychology: Additional studies that do not fit into the previous two categories.

Though this is only a list of results, the corresponding footnotes provided can lead any curious observer to the specific studies that yielded such findings. And with that, we begin.

I. Developmental Psychology Evidence:

• Newborns’ eyes track shapes that more closely resemble human faces than shapes that do not. [i]
• Infants have a greater tendency to look at faces angled towards them than away from them. [ii]
• Babies eventually lose interest in still objects but will continue looking at a human face even if it is motionless (and have a tendency to grow upset when doing so). [iii]
• Pre-verbal infants have shown a tendency to expect someone to approach an altruistic individual rather than a non-altruistic individual. [iv]
• Children between the ages of three and six have emulated how adults treated a doll just by watching them, including imitating violent acts. [v]
• Children disproportionately ask for the specific toys and candy advertised on television. [vi]
• Teenage suicide rates increase when the news covers how a celebrity has taken their life. [vii]

II. Neuroscientific Evidence:

• In our visual cortex there is a special place just for processing faces called the fusiform face area. [viii]
• The size of an animal’s group or pack has been positively correlated with the size of the animal’s neocortex — the more advanced region responsible for higher-order processes like language and self-awareness. [ix]
• Our Default Network — the regions of our brain that are active when we aren’t performing a task — is nearly identical to that of Social Cognition, when we are thinking about people. This suggests that we are reflexively thinking about our relationships with others. [x]
• Throughout multiple brain regions, scientists have discovered both in humans and other animals Mirror Neurons — brain cells that activate both when we are performing an act and when we are watching that same act being performed. [xi]
• A neuroimaging experiment involving simulating social exclusion found that social pain is registered similarly to physical pain. [xii]
• The neurotransmitters oxytocin is released during during social interactions — such as hugging, kissing, and other forms of physical contact — and has proven to be fundamental in forming (and maintaining) social bonds (which also includes being defensive against outsiders). [xiii]
• Neuroimaging studies have shown that specific brain regions, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, are activated when humans engage in tasks that require understanding the thoughts and intentions of others. This supports the concept of "theory of mind," which is essential for successful social interactions. [xiv]
• Heartbreak and grief activate similar networks than that of physical pain. [xv]
• Acts of altruism have resulted in reduced stress-related brain activity. [xvi]
• Tylenol has been shown to reduce social pain. [xvii]

III. Social Psychology Evidence:

• If we believe we are being watched — we are more likely to help others, [xix] less likely to cheat, [xx] more likely to donate (and donate more), [xxi] and less likely to cause trouble when we feel we are being watched — even if it is just a picture of a face. [xxii]
• Divorce filings surge by over 30% in the United States after New Years, as many are motivated then to look for a new start. [xxiii]
• Prisoners who have experienced solitary confinement have a 50% higher rate of suicide, along with higher overdose rates, [xxiii] with some experiencing identity loss. [xxiv]
• Social isolation has been estimated to be as dangerous as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and about twice as harmful for mental and physical health as obesity — no matter where you live. [xxv]
• We wince or flinch or feel like we’re feeling pain when watching others be harmed. [xxvi]
• Those that watch crime dramas tend to overestimate the crime rate. [xxvii]
• We notice threatening faces more than non-threatening faces [xxviii], especially when we feel chronically stressed (an environment that might involve perpetual threat). [xxix]

And there you have it! Twenty-plus studies that demonstrate our innate sociality. Again, if you want to learn more, check out fifteen of the most important experiments within social psychology! Stay social!

Samuel Armen is an author, educator, podcast host, and activist. Orphaned after Armenia’s Gyumri-Spitak Earthquake in 1988 and adopted by Armenian-Americans based in New York, he makes it his life goal to give back. Currently, he divides his time between his psychology MA at Fordham University, teaching ELA & AP English Language and Composition in the top public high school in Brooklyn, creative writing guest lectures at The Russian Armenian University in Yerevan, teaching and managing an English Creative Writing program (Project Bloom) through the Children of Armenia Fund, uplifting members of his community through digital advocacy, and publishing articles and poetry. Innerversal — his video podcast aiming to make all forms of psychology accessible by fusing it with topics ranging from gut health and education to entrepreneurship and fatherhood — was launched on Spotify in April 2023. It is also available on YouTube.

Footnotes:

[i] Johnson, M. H., Dziurawiec, S., Ellis, H., & Morton, J. (1991). Newborns’ preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline. Cognition, 40(1–2), 1–19.
[ii] Farroni, T., Csibra, G., Simion, F., & Johnson, M. H. (2002). Eye contact detection in humans from birth. Proceedings of the National academy of sciences, 99(14), 9602–9605.
[iii] Adamson, L. B., & Frick, J. E. (2003). The still face: A history of a shared experimental paradigm. Infancy, 4(4), 451–473.
[iv] Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557–559.
[v] Bandura, A., Ross, D. and Ross, S., 1961. Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), pp.575–582.
[vi] Kunkel, D., & Roberts, D. (1991). Young minds and marketplace values: Issues in children’s television advertising. Journal of Social Issues, 47(1), 57–72.
[vii] Phillips, D. P., & Carstensen, L. L. (1986). Clustering of teenage suicides after television news stories about suicide. New England journal of medicine, 315(11), 685–689.
[viii] Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., & Chun, M. M. (1997). The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. Journal of neuroscience, 17(11), 4302–4311.
[ix] Dunbar, R. I. (1992). Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of human evolution, 22(6), 469–493.
[x] Lieberman, M. D. (2013). Part One: Beginnings. In Social: Why our brains are wired to connect (pp. 1–36). essay, Broadway Books.
[xi] Heyes, C. (2010). Where do mirror neurons come from?. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 34(4), 575–583.
[xii] Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292.
[xiii] Olff, M., Frijling, J. L., Kubzansky, L. D., Bradley, B., Ellenbogen, M. A., Cardoso, C., … & Van Zuiden, M. (2013). The role of oxytocin in social bonding, stress regulation and mental health: an update on the moderating effects of context and interindividual differences. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 38(9), 1883–1894.
[xiv] Amodio, D. M., & Frith, C. D. (2006). Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nature reviews neuroscience, 7(4), 268–277.
[xv] Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). Broken hearts and broken bones: A neural perspective on the similarities between social and physical pain. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(1), 42–47.
[xvi] Inagaki, T. K., Bryne Haltom, K. E., Suzuki, S., Jevtic, I., Hornstein, E., Bower, J. E., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2016). The Neurobiology of Giving Versus Receiving Support: The Role of Stress-Related and Social Reward-Related Neural Activity. Psychosomatic medicine, 78(4), 443–453. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000302
[xvii] Dewall, C. N., Macdonald, G., Webster, G. D., Masten, C. L., Baumeister, R. F., Powell, C., Combs, D., Schurtz, D. R., Stillman, T. F., Tice, D. M., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2010). Acetaminophen reduces social pain: behavioral and neural evidence. Psychological science, 21(7), 931–937. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610374741
[xviii] van Rompay, T. J. L., Vonk, D. J., & Fransen, M. L. (2009). The eye of the camera: Effects of security cameras on prosocial behavior. Environment and Behavior, 41(1), 60–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916507309996
[xix] Zhong, C.-B., Bohns, V. K., & Gino, F. (2010). Good lamps are the best police: Darkness increases dishonesty and self-interested behavior. Psychological Science, 21(3), 311–314. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609360754
[xx] Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology letters, 2(3), 412–414. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2006.0509
[xxi] Ernest-Jones, M., Nettle, D., & Bateson, M. (2011). Effects of eye images on everyday cooperative behavior: A field experiment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32(3), 172–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.10.006
[xxii] Divorce filings surge by over 30% in the United States after New Years, as many are motivated then to look for a new start.
[xxiii] Casella, J., Ridgeway, J., & Shourd, S. (2018). Hell is a very small place: voices from solitary confinement. New Press.
[xxiv] Haney, C. (2003). Mental health issues in long-term solitary and “supermax” confinement. Crime & Delinquency, 49(1), 124–156.
[xxv] Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on psychological science, 10(2), 227–237.
[xxvi] Rütgen, M., Seidel, E.M., Silani, G., Riečanský, I., Hummer, A., Windischberger, C., Petrovic, P. & Lamm, C. (2015). Placebo analgesia and its opioidergic regulation suggest that empathy for pain is grounded in self pain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(41), E5638-E5646.
[xxvii] Signorielli, N., Gerbner, G., & Morgan, M. (1995). Standpoint: Violence on television: The cultural indicators project.
[xxviii] Japee, S., Crocker, L., Carver, F., Pessoa, L., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2009). Individual differences in valence modulation of face-selective m170 response. Emotion, 9(1), 59–69. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014487
[xxix] Fox E, Lester V, Russo R, Bowles RJ, Pichler A, Dutton K. Facial Expressions of Emotion: Are Angry Faces Detected More Efficiently?. Cogn Emot. 2000;14(1):61–92. doi:10.1080/026999300378996