Hello Jay; Whatever reproductive advantages accrue to an individual from living in a social group would be lost if the individual were to be ejected from that group. That is a general statement that must be true for any social system to persist. So, a member’s perception of the risk of ejection is what elicits the behaviors that you enumerate. And, in one form or another they must appear as part of the developing social system.

This suite of behaviors evolved a multitude of times in many taxa and so I’d phrase the question as a paleontological one. What is the earliest record of social behavior? I’d look for anatomical structures that suggest display behavior.

This is quite an interesting question! Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers

It's interesting, as you say, to think of how many times social pain may have evolved among different taxa, and whether or not it originated in a more ancient common ancestor. As I understand it (imperfectly), some reptiles, many birds, and nearly all mammals emit separation distress (i.e. social pain) vocalizations when lost or abandoned (if not, they might not survive). Hence, perhaps social pain first originated in a reptilian common ancestor as a means of soliciting "social support" (i.e. food and defense from predators) from parents and/or alloparents. This would have to have occurred prior to the split between lineages leading from our tetrapodal ancestors to dinosaurs and birds on one hand, and mammals on the other. Paleontologically, I believe we have found evidence of social nurturing of young and herd behavior even among the original cast of Jurassic Park. Hmm.

Jay; By that line of reasoning, social behavior generally would be simply an extension of maternal behavior. That's a good idea. Territorial behavior or herding behavior, lekking, and the like would also be good candidates. All of those occur widely. Nesting aggregations in some dinosaurs comes to mind as a paleo. example. Best, Jim Des Lauriers

Dear collegues,

i see very interestig question and would like to add my point of view. I agree with an antropologist (i forgot the name, it is shame) that the first social behavior happened with the fisrt medical help and care because of broken bone. One person was injured and other one or more did care before he or she was againe healthy and could care about his or her life.

With other words i think first social pain has its origine in the time when people or animals could imagine sitiuation of other and help because realizing it would be horrible to be at that place. I think start of social is if one can help and care for free.

A lot of taxa have complex collective behavior wich looks social, but i think inside it selfish motivation, sex, sources or wish to have children, because real social it if we have no garantee for the positive feedback.

On the other hand very primitive creations for exapmle virus of plants can help each other because of kind of vaccination. Immunity is kind of some kind of complex collective behavior. Collective protection for individual surviving is not socilal.

I think social pain starts with compation.

Best regards, An

I suspect you're right, An, that providing help to another with compassion (which, scientifically, might be mediated by either oxytocin or another variety of the so-called "love" or social bonding hormone) is a prime example of social care and support . . . the absence of which seems to cause social pain.

I, too, have noted archeological and anthropological examples of apparently compassionate social support in ancient humans, which seem to transcend innate reflexes or even evolved parental care.

For example, Graeber and Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, 2022) describe the care given to Romito 2, a 10,000-year-old male found in a Calabrian rock shelter, who had a rare genetic disorder that would have rendered him "unable to participate in the kind of high-altitude hunting necessary for survival in his community." Nevertheless, "studies of his pathology show that ... that same community of hunter-gatherers still took pains to support this individual through infancy and into early adulthood, granting him the same share of meat as everyone else, and ultimately according him a careful, sheltered burial." (p. 14)

In a footnote, they add that Margaret Mead once suggest that "the first sign of 'civilization' in human history was not tool use but a 15,000-year-old skeleton that showed signs of having healed from a broken femur. It takes six weeks, she noted, to recover from such an injury; most animals with broken femurs simply die because their companions abandon them [JEV: no doubt causing social pain!]; one of the things that make us humans so unusual is precisely that we take care of one another in such situations." (p 529)

I wonder, though, if we would respond like this had we--and our ancestors--not previously evolved both social pain and behavioral signals of such pain, to which parents and other conspecifics responded.

On the other hand, I agree that schooling, flocking, and herding behavior may not represent truly "social" or at least "caring" behavior. As evolutionary anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, has noted: although "lone animals are highly vulnerable to predators", "the fleeting and ephemeral interactions of herd animals do not form lasting [social] bonds" (Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health, 2022, pp. 11, 204).

Thanks for weighing in the discussion, An.

Thank you for attention. Indeed, i meant the publication of Margaret Mead.

I think special SOS signals can be sended, but not necessary...

One can feel social pain and express it-than, yes, signal can lead to compassion. We have a lot of cases when person inside of situation cannot sent signal, besause see the situation as normal. Observer feels socail pain, because understand the situation much deeper. For exmple, child get money for ticket home and food from granny and goes to the busstop. There is a drunky men who is asking for a money for call sick brother. Child gives money, because one schould help and feeling happy for being kind. There is no singal from the child. One observer can feel social pain, because the drunky man is not kind and realizing a danger for a child.

I would define a social pain as a result of not psysical bad act (can be with physical together as a emotion for not fair acting) against person, or feelings of one who see this and change own mind for defenition of world as a not safe plase with no option for control and avoidinng danger. It can lead to despiration and as a ultimate end to suiside.

Best regards, An

Here's an interesting twist to the potential origin of social nurture, care, and support (hence, the need for social pain as an alarm system for any life-threatening loss or interruption of such support): according to Sara Blaffer Hrdy's new book, Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies (2024), at least some of our ancient MALE ancestors (possibly fish) seem to have been the original caregivers of offspring.

Females may have simply deposited eggs in promising territories guarded over by the guys, and swam off, free and clear of child support, while the males fertilized any eggs found in their neighborhood and took care of the young, on the (reasonable) assumption that, hey, they must be my kids. Baby fish, by the way, are called "fry," which sounds, well, rather tasty. With tartar sauce.

Any more ideas out there about when, in geologic time, social pain might have evolved by natural selection tinkering with some of the physical pain machinery lying about the garage? Anyone?

Jay; Some contrary evidence about fish paternal care being a model. The stem groups of fishes don't spend energy caring for fry. Among modern fishes you can find such behavior among sticklebacks, cichlids and many other groups. Both the named groups are well studied in this regard. Fossil evidence would be hard to come by.

Male parenting behavior undoubtedly evolved many times in many taxa that are territorial. I visualize it as lekking behavior (an honest signal) that was hyjacked by females...as you described it, the females need only deposit their eggs in the successful males' domain and he's stuck. Cheers, Jim Des Lauriers

True, Jim, fossil evidence would be hard to come by. I'm largely inferring behavior, based on modern analogs, somewhat like how we infer characteristics of a common ancestor based on common or universal behaviors among descendants of different evolutionary lineages.