Two Types of Social Grooming Methods depending on the Trade-off between the Number and Strength of Social Relationships

TL;DR

This study identifies two distinct social grooming types—elaborate and lightweight—based on their trade-offs between relationship number and strength, using data from humans and baboons, highlighting their roles in social bonding.

Contribution

The paper introduces a model distinguishing two social grooming types and links them to social relationship trade-offs across different communication methods.

Findings

Elaborate grooming reinforces close relationships with higher effort.

Lightweight grooming maintains many weak ties with less effort.

Different social environments influence grooming method usage.

Abstract

Humans use various social bonding methods known as social grooming, e.g. face to face communication, greetings, phone, and social networking sites (SNS). SNS have drastically decreased time and distance constraints of social grooming. In this paper, I show that two types of social grooming (elaborate social grooming and lightweight social grooming) were discovered in a model constructed by thirteen communication data-sets including face to face, SNS, and Chacma baboons. The separation of social grooming methods is caused by a difference in the trade-off between the number and strength of social relationships. The trade-off of elaborate social grooming is weaker than the trade-off of lightweight social grooming. On the other hand, the time and effort of elaborate methods are higher than lightweight methods. Additionally, my model connects social grooming behaviour and social relationship forms with these trade-offs. By analyzing the model, I show that individuals tend to use elaborate social grooming to reinforce a few close relationships (e.g. face to face and Chacma baboons). In contrast, people tend to use lightweight social grooming to maintain many weak relationships (e.g. SNS). Humans with lightweight methods who live in significantly complex societies use various social grooming to effectively construct social relationships.