The DOI matches its Crossref record; 46 of the 46 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Evolution in the Social Brain
Abstract
The evolution of unusually large brains in some groups of animals, notably primates, has long been a puzzle. Although early explanations tended to emphasize the brain's role in sensory or technical competence (foraging skills, innovations, and way-finding), the balance of evidence now clearly favors the suggestion that it was the computational demands of living in large, complex societies that selected for large brains. However, recent analyses suggest that it may have been the particular demands of the more intense forms of pairbonding that was the critical factor that triggered this evolutionary development. This may explain why primate sociality seems to be so different from that found in most other birds and mammals: Primate sociality is based on bonded relationships of a kind that are found only in pairbonds in other taxa.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
(2003) · Cited by 2,898
Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates
Dunbar, R. I. M. (1992) · Journal of Human Evolution · doi:10.1016/0047-2484(92)90081-j · Cited by 2,542
Self-citationThe expensive-tissue hypothesis: The brain and the digestive system in human and primate evolution
Aiello, L. C., & Wheeler, P. (1995) · Current Anthropology · doi:10.1086/204350 · Cited by 2,291
EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN AND INTELLIGENCE
Radinsky, L. (1975) · Evolution · doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1975.tb00828.x · Cited by 1,969
The neurobiology of pair bonding.
Young, L. J., & Wang, Z. (2004) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn1327 · Cited by 1,523
Dunbar, R. I. M. (1988) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-6694-2 · Cited by 1,258
Self-citationLinked Regularities in the Development and Evolution of Mammalian Brains
Finlay, B. L., & Darlington, R. B. (1995) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.7777856 · Cited by 1,217
Social intelligence, innovation, and enhanced brain size in primates
Reader, S. M., & Laland, K. N. (2002) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.062041299 · Cited by 1,126
Why Are Diurnal Primates Living in Groups?
Van Schaik, C. P. (1983) · Behaviour · doi:10.1163/156853983x00147 · Cited by 1,022
Big brains, enhanced cognition, and response of birds to novel environments
Sol, D., Duncan, R. P., Blackburn, T. M., Cassey, P., & Lefebvre, L. (2005) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0408145102 · Cited by 913
Cited by
How do you feel — now? The anterior insula and human awareness
(Bud) Craig, A. D. (2009) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn2555 · Cited by 6,657
Perceived social isolation and cognition
Cacioppo, J. T., & Hawkley, L. C. (2009) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.06.005 · Cited by 2,144
The Social Brain: Neural Basis of Social Knowledge
Adolphs, R. (2009) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163514 · Cited by 1,827
Renovating the Pyramid of Needs: Contemporary Extensions Built Upon Ancient Foundations
Kenrick, D. T., Griskevicius, V., Neuberg, S. L., & Schaller, M. (2010) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691610369469 · Cited by 1,132
Social relationships and health: The toxic effects of perceived social isolation
Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2014) · Social and Personality Psychology Compass · doi:10.1111/spc3.12087 · Cited by 1,057
Metadata
- Authors
- Dunbar, R. I. M., & Shultz, S.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2007-09-07
- Volume
- 317
- Issue
- 5843
- Pages
- 1344-1347
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2168671565
- Cited by
- 1,542
- References
- 46
- FWCI
- 59.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Evolution in the Social Brain. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1145463
- The paper
- Dunbar, R. I. M., & Shultz, S. (2007). Evolution in the Social Brain. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1145463
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
