Bigger group size increases brain load. Group members have to be smart enough to balance their individual needs with those of the pack. It has meant cooperating and managing individual needs and desires. It’s a challenge to understand and deal with our individual place in our ever-shifting alliances so that we do not find ourselves isolated in the bigger group.
From David Dobbs, “The Gregarious Brain” in the New York Times, 7/7/07 Link
“In this and other ways a group’s members would create, test and declare their alliances. But as the animals and groups grew, tracking and understanding all those relationships required more intelligence. According to the social-brain theory, it was this need to understand social dynamics — not the need to find food or navigate terrain — that spurred and rewarded the evolution of bigger and bigger primate brains.
“…The bigger an animal’s typical group size (20 or so for macaques, for instance, 50 or so for chimps), the larger the percentage of brain devoted to neocortex, the thin but critical outer layer that accounts for most of a primate’s cognitive abilities. In most mammals the neocortex accounts for 30 percent to 40 percent of brain volume. In the highly social primates it occupies about 50 percent to 65 percent. In humans, it’s 80 percent.”
So perhaps we could say that we are so ‘smart’ among species because we are social and need one another, and there are so many of us. Perhaps our social nature has been the cause of our growing intelligence, not the effect.
It’s also instructive to note that if the challenges of the ‘I’ in the ‘We’ are great enough to have had us require larger brains to cope with increasing social complexity, then it might be a good idea for us to pay more attention to that most important dynamic between the ‘I’ and the ‘We”, the collaborative matrix.
Q: How might we pay attention to this matrix in our daily work? Where are the key touch points in paying attention to the ‘I’ dancing with the ‘We’?
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