Study: http:\/\/www.nature.com\/srep\/2013\/130321\/srep01513\/full\/ Study examines\u00a0informationHumans keep track of social information\u00a0not by rote memorization but with simplifying rules, as you might remember a number sequence that always increases by two, according to author Matthew Brashears, assistant professor of sociology. People recall social ties that both involve at least three people who know each other and kinship labels such as \u201caunt\u201d twice as well as they remember ties that do not<\/strong>, even though triad kinship networks are far more complex, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHumans are able to manage big, sprawling, complicated social networks essentially because we don\u2019t remember big, sprawling, complicated social networks<\/strong>. We remember simplified, regular structures that bear a reasonable similarity to what those networks look like,\u201d Brashears said. In cases where the relationships don\u2019t fit the pattern, we remember the pattern and the few exceptions, instead of remembering all the ties simultaneously, he added.<\/p>\n About 300 study participants read paragraphs describing a group of people and how they relate to each other. Some paragraphs included kinship labels and some didn\u2019t<\/strong>. Other paragraphs included closed triads \u2013 where three people each know each other \u2013 while other paragraphs did not. The participants were then asked to recall as many of the ties as possible.<\/p>\n When the paragraphs contained both kinship labels and closed triads, the participants\u2019 recall improved by 50 percent compared with participants whose paragraphs included neither \u2013 even though the kinship and triad paragraphs contained nearly twice as many relationships.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a pretty substantial improvement,\u201d Brashears said. Moreover, participants did worse when trying to recall paragraphs that had kin relationships but no triads<\/strong>. \u201cIt\u2019s like trying to remember a random number sequence by using the \u2018increase by two\u2019 rule,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The study helps explain how humans actively manage so many more social ties compared with other primates<\/strong> \u2013 a key question in the field of sociology. The answer is that we evolved the capacity to spot and use social patterns.<\/p>\n \u201cOur ability to remember and manage socials ties \u2013 and build bigger groups of people \u2013 had to do with coming up with new and interesting ways of compressing that information. It\u2019s about how we structure our groups and how that allows us to remember them, as opposed to just sheer cognitive horsepower,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The research may help also explain some peculiarities of human networks, such as transitivity: If George is my friend and Susan is my friend, then Susan and George are likely to be friends. Brashears suspects that some social networks are easier to remember than others, and individuals who build groups that conform to those rules were more evolutionarily successful.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the reasons why human networks look the way they do is because they have to, in order for us to process them, to manage it cognitively<\/strong>,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Medical researchers may benefit from the research as they seek to understand why some people don\u2019t grasp social intricacies as well as others. \u201cWe may have a better ability to understand social anxiety and autism spectrum if we understand how we\u2019re compressing and reconstructing social information using these mechanisms,\u201d Brashears said.<\/p>\n Cornell and the National Science Foundation funded the research.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Cornell University press release via Newswise: With a dizzying number of ties in our social networks \u2013 that your Aunt Alice is a neighbor of Muhammad who is married to Natasha who is your wife\u2019s boss \u2013 it\u2019s a wonder we remember any of it. How do we keep track of the complexity?… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[12,98,186],"class_list":["post-11783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memory","category-relationships","tag-psychology","tag-social","tag-social-networks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11783"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11830,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11783\/revisions\/11830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Social](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/SocialNetwork.jpg\")
With a dizzying number of ties in our social networks \u2013 that your Aunt Alice is a neighbor of Muhammad who is married to Natasha who is your wife\u2019s boss \u2013 it\u2019s a wonder we remember any of it. How do we keep track of the complexity? We cheat<\/strong>, says a Cornell University sociologist in Scientific Reports<\/i> (March 21), a publication of Nature<\/i>.<\/p>\n
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