Social Risk Hypothesis
This hypothesis is similar to the rank hypothesis but focuses more on general social approval in a group rather than direct dominance contests. To maintain social ties were critical for survival and reproduction. During the Pleistocene period, for instance, such social ties were vital in food foraging and protection from predators.
Depression, resulting from one’s loss of what one approach calls "Social Attention Holding Power," or SAHP, may have signalled the individual's submissiveness to the more dominant males of the social group through associated symptoms, such as low confidence and anxiety. This, in turn, reduced tension among group members, and enabled bonds to be maintained. Secondly, depression may also have served to signal other members of an individual’s need for aid and desire to reform lost bonds.
Read more about this topic: Evolutionary Approaches To Depression
Famous quotes containing the words social, risk and/or hypothesis:
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“Better risk loss of truth than chance of error—that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)