Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans
Age and gender are two important factors that play crucial roles in the way organisms allocate their social effort. In this study, we analyse a large mobile phone dataset to explore the way life history influences human sociality and the way social networks are structured. Our results indicate that...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
The Royal Society Publishing
2016
|
| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4852646/ |
| id |
pubmed-4852646 |
|---|---|
| recordtype |
oai_dc |
| spelling |
pubmed-48526462016-05-05 Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans Bhattacharya, Kunal Ghosh, Asim Monsivais, Daniel Dunbar, Robin I. M. Kaski, Kimmo Physics Age and gender are two important factors that play crucial roles in the way organisms allocate their social effort. In this study, we analyse a large mobile phone dataset to explore the way life history influences human sociality and the way social networks are structured. Our results indicate that these aspects of human behaviour are strongly related to age and gender such that younger individuals have more contacts and, among them, males more than females. However, the rate of decrease in the number of contacts with age differs between males and females, such that there is a reversal in the number of contacts around the late 30s. We suggest that this pattern can be attributed to the difference in reproductive investments that are made by the two sexes. We analyse the inequality in social investment patterns and suggest that the age- and gender-related differences we find reflect the constraints imposed by reproduction in a context where time (a form of social capital) is limited. The Royal Society Publishing 2016-04-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4852646/ /pubmed/27152223 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160097 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Bhattacharya, Kunal Ghosh, Asim Monsivais, Daniel Dunbar, Robin I. M. Kaski, Kimmo |
| spellingShingle |
Bhattacharya, Kunal Ghosh, Asim Monsivais, Daniel Dunbar, Robin I. M. Kaski, Kimmo Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans |
| author_facet |
Bhattacharya, Kunal Ghosh, Asim Monsivais, Daniel Dunbar, Robin I. M. Kaski, Kimmo |
| author_sort |
Bhattacharya, Kunal |
| title |
Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans |
| title_short |
Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans |
| title_full |
Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans |
| title_fullStr |
Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans |
| title_sort |
sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans |
| description |
Age and gender are two important factors that play crucial roles in the way organisms allocate their social effort. In this study, we analyse a large mobile phone dataset to explore the way life history influences human sociality and the way social networks are structured. Our results indicate that these aspects of human behaviour are strongly related to age and gender such that younger individuals have more contacts and, among them, males more than females. However, the rate of decrease in the number of contacts with age differs between males and females, such that there is a reversal in the number of contacts around the late 30s. We suggest that this pattern can be attributed to the difference in reproductive investments that are made by the two sexes. We analyse the inequality in social investment patterns and suggest that the age- and gender-related differences we find reflect the constraints imposed by reproduction in a context where time (a form of social capital) is limited. |
| publisher |
The Royal Society Publishing |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4852646/ |
| _version_ |
1613573913638338560 |