New Scientist - USA (2020-04-18)

12 | New Scientist | 18 April 2020

ROBIN DUNBAR has spent decades

studying relationships, social

bonding and the importance of

touch and grooming in forging

and sustaining our ties to others.

As much of the world remains

in lockdown, unable to meet loved

ones and friends in person, New

Scientist caught up with him to ask

what implications this might have.

Tiffany O’Callaghan: How

important are touch and contact

in person in our relationships?

Robin Dunbar: For all mammals,

including us, grooming

triggers the endorphin system

[which relieves stress and pain].

Brain-imaging studies looking

at people being stroked show

that their endorphin receptors

go absolutely crazy.

With our closer friends and

family, you actually do a lot of

casual stroking and touching

and hugging that we don’t think

about, it’s all going on below the

event horizon of consciousness.

Not only does this make you

feel happy, because it releases

endorphins, which raise your pain

thresholds and make you feel

relaxed and much more trusting,

but it also seems to kick on the

immune system, making you

more resistant to diseases.

Are you worried about people going

without this kind of touch, due to

the pandemic or other issues?

For most people, in the short

term, I would say no. Everything

hinges on how long this lasts.

Clearly, the expectation is that

it’s only going to be a few months

and then we’re going to be back

to normal. You can also trigger

this same endorphin system by

going for a jog, for instance.

Are there social ways to trigger

this response?

To increase the size of our social

groups, we’ve discovered ways

of triggering the endorphin

system that don’t involve touch.

All of the singing from balconies

and in streets. Singing is one of the

social mechanisms we use. There’s

laughter, singing, dancing, eating

socially, drinking socially, all of

those kinds of things are what

we use to enlarge our social circle.

Physical grooming is very

intimate. This is what ultimately

limits the size of primates’ social

groups. They don’t have enough

time in the day to groom more

than a set number of individuals,

and the quality of the relationship

depends on the time invested in it.

So going out to clap for

healthcare workers and the like

probably makes you feel better.

So doing things with others

amplifies feel-good effects?

Yes. We first discovered this

with rowing crews, in a study

we did about 10 years ago. We

showed that just by rowing on

the machines in the gym there’s

an uplift in pain threshold

signalling and endorphin release.

But then if you link the rowing

machines into a virtual boat, so

the rowers are rowing together

and in synchrony, it ramps up

the endorphin output by about

100 per cent for no extra effort.

We’ve shown this with dance

too, and even tears. We did a study

in which we had a group of people

watch a very emotionally draining

film. People who like weepy films

get this rush of endorphins,

and then also feel very bonded

to the group of strangers who

they watched it with.

The sociality ramps up the

effect. That’s why I think a lot of

these social mechanisms we use

for bonding on the larger scale are

highly synchronised: laughter,

singing, dancing, religious rituals.

Can we get the benefits of shared

activities – such as laughing or

singing together – over video chat?

We haven’t looked at that directly,

but we have looked at people’s

sense of satisfaction or happiness

as a result of communicating

with friends via different media.

Skype and face-to-face video are

in a different league to everything

else. Once you can see the person,

it makes a big difference – the fact

that you can see the smile

breaking on their face before

you’ve finished the joke.

Do you think there will be positive

things that come out of this

lockdown, in terms of how we

connect with each other?

We’ve already seen people getting

onto Skype or Zoom [video chats]

with their friends or extended

family and saying, “This is crazy,

why have we never done this

before?” That may well continue.

It completely neutralises the

problem of distance. In social

networks, there’s a very strong

effect called the 30-minute rule

that dictates how long you’re

willing to travel to go to see

somebody. Video and other

digital media reduces its impact.

Many people are now

contacting friends and family

at rates that far exceed what

they’ve done normally.

And I think when lockdown

is removed, people will be

making a big effort to go

and visit friends and family. ❚

Profile

Robin Dunbar studies the evolution

of primate social behaviour

at the University of Oxford, UK

Relationships under lockdown

Interview: Robin Dunbar

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“ We’ve discovered ways

to trigger endorphins

that don’t involve touch:

singing, dancing, laughter”

Social distancing may limit how much we see loved ones, but that doesn’t

mean our relationships will be damaged, finds Tiffany O’Callaghan

People in countries around the

world are experiencing levels of

social isolation they aren’t used to

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