How laughter and storytelling made social group living possible

[adriaanb]

Social emotions like shame, pride, envy and respect help us overcome the prisoner dilemmas we encounter in group living. We are all equipped with these emotions that can steer our behaviour. But social rules can differ enormously over time and from group to group. We can function just fine under any set of rules, as long as we are in tune with the rest of the group. So we can't be taken advantage of and we don't make costly social errors. This means we have to constantly calibrate our social sensitivities to those of the group.

 

Evolution has selected for a liking of listening to social narratives, because in a stone-age setting they would expose us to the vocal reactions of approval and disapproval of the people around us. The laughter or anger we hear makes us aware of the social boundaries and influences how we think ourselves, we mirror the emotions we feel around us. Because when it comes to social morals, it doesn't pay to be different. So with much of storytelling, it isn't about the story, it is all about the vocal reactions of the group. They get us in tune with the group and the group in tune with us.

 

But then we automated the 'storyteller in middle of the group', with a TV set that we often watch on our own. People can watch almost the same storyline in drama and comedy again and again, it is their social brain that makes them do it. But without the vocal reactions of our group, much of it is has become a waste of time. The brain never anticipated being fooled by electronics.

 

You see why watching comedy without the studio laughter is so difficult. We actually get the message that what we are seeing shouldn't be deemed funny because nobody else is laughing.

 

To read more about this:

ADRIAANB

 

See my other posts for some more ideas, i would love to hear if they make sense to anyone.

[freeztar]

Social emotions like shame, pride, envy and respect

 

Those are not necessarily "social emotions". Envy seems to be the only emotion on that list which is reliant on another person/entity.

 

Evolution has selected for a liking of listening to social narratives because in a stone-age setting they would expose us to the vocal reactions of approval and disapproval of the people around us.

 

The current, biological theory of evolution makes no such claims that I am aware of. What you have presented works well as a thinking exercise to explore the possibilities of the beginnings of social networking, but this idea does not work well in the traditional sense of evolution. While it's common to see the word 'evolution' used as a synonym to words such as 'development' and 'change', this is not the true meaning or intention of the word 'evolution'.

 

The laughter or anger we hear makes us aware of the social boundaries and influences how we think ourselves, we mirror the emotions we feel around us. Because when it comes to social morals, it doesn't pay to be different. So with much of storytelling, it isn't about the story, it is all about the vocal reactions of the group. They get us in tune with the group and the group in tune with us.

 

But then we automated the 'storyteller in middle of the group', with a TV set that we often watch on our own. People can watch almost the same storyline in drama and comedy again and again, it is their social brain that makes them do it. But without the vocal reactions of our group, much of it is has become a waste of time. The brain never anticipated being fooled by electronics.

 

You see why watching comedy without the studio laughter is so difficult. We actually get the message that what we are seeing shouldn't be deemed funny because nobody else is laughing.

 

This subject seems to best belong in the Social Science forum. Unless it morphs into a biological discussion, I will move it over there.

 

Edit: Moved to Philosophy instead.

[charles brough]

Yes, laughter and storytelling around the campfire fosters closeness feelings, but societies are hardly united by laughter. "Stores," however, are another matter!

 

Religious stories told and believed in common do provide a sense of community. (Why atheism makes you mean - SciForums.com)

 

And, yes, group living now needs all that because we are not evolved to live in such large groups, in societies. We evolved in hunting-gathering groups of only perhaps 40 or more individuals through millions of years of evolution. It is basic to our social nature. We are stressed up by being massed together and divided by a multitude of different beliefs---especially when they are all old and obsolete, unscientific.

 

we can do better with a new ideology, one that can unite the world . . .

[Galapagos]

Yes, laughter and storytelling around the campfire fosters closeness feelings, but societies are hardly united by laughter. "Stores," however, are another matter!

 

Religious stories told and believed in common do provide a sense of community. (Why atheism makes you mean - SciForums.com)

 

And, yes, group living now needs all that because we are not evolved to live in such large groups, in societies. We evolved in hunting-gathering groups of only perhaps 40 or more individuals through millions of years of evolution. It is basic to our social nature. We are stressed up by being massed together and divided by a multitude of different beliefs---especially when they are all old and obsolete, unscientific.

 

we can do better with a new ideology, one that can unite the world . . .

 

There seems to be a more recent study by Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff(2008 oct)[these same guys published the research in the thread linked above] that shows that secular institutional authorities motivate people to be charitable as much as the possibility of God watching does.

It is also interesting to note that religious people behaved more nicely only when they believed others(or God) were watching, and that the charitable act would improve their reputation.

 

 

Massimo Pigliucci had some good coverage over at Rationally Speaking:

 

To begin with, they debunk the oft-repeated claim that religiosity increases charitability. It turns out studies that have made that link are entirely based on self-reporting, a notoriously unreliable source of behavioral evidence. When one looks into experimental studies of the issue, the picture changes dramatically. A series of “Good Samaritan” studies found that people’s actual (as opposed to self-reported) charitable behavior shows no correspondence whatsoever with the degree of religious belief. Secular people are just as likely (or not) to help someone in distress as are religious people. Interestingly, however, researchers have been able to show that a strong link between religiosity and prosocial behavior does emerge, but only when there is a self-reputation enhancing egoistic motivation: religious people are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior if they know that there is a good chance that their reputation in the group will be positively affected.

 

Perhaps one of the most interesting sets of experiments reported by Norenzayan and Shariff concerns what happens when people are reminded of a morally watchful authority -- religious or secular. In a control group that was not “primed” with a god-like concept, people behaved selfishly (most pocketed an available sum of money without sharing). When participants were primed with a god reminder, however, the modal behavior switched to fairness (they split the money). So, does religion trigger altruistic behavior after all? Nope. Here’s the kicker: people that were primed with reminders of a secular moral authority were just as altruistic as the religiously primed ones! It isn’t religion, it is the presence of a moral authority that does the trick.

[charles brough]

"". . .people that were primed with reminders of a secular moral authority were just as altruistic as the religiously primed ones! It isn’t religion, it is the presence of a moral authority that does the trick."

 

Absolutely! Every religion has a moral authority. It is the primate alpha male of the human group social group and what we are instinctively attuned to. It may be a "God" or an emperor or President. After 9/11, and everyone became angry or afraid, Bush became our Alpha male moral authority. He told us who was "the Axis of Evil" and the people thought they were on "the moral hight ground" and willingly went to war as he directed (with lies)---all based upon our secular-Christian ideology. We were informed that the nations we attacked were "evil" (Satanic) and needed "democracy." (!) Without a common belief system, no one can be the Alpha male to a group larger than a few dozen.

 

Every society has a religion that binds the people into it and each society is made up of nations which are sub-groups of the society. All people have a common belief system that way. We call it "religion" and includes the East Asian Marxist nations and society. Even we atheists have our world of science theory (belief). No one has no belief, and only the insane have beliefs not common to masses of other people.

 

You believe much as I do, we believe in evolution, are Free Thinkers, accept many of the Ten Commandments and a dozen other moral axioms not found in the Bible and what are now apart of our Secular moral system---such as protecting the environment, being humane, tolerant, against slavery and torture, etc. etc. What controls public opinion is our secular-religious system.

 

charles

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