Hostname: page-component-857557d7f7-wf4rb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-12-04T00:22:30.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

What human trust networks reveal about cognitive mechanisms of group cohesion in primates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2025

Cristina Acedo-Carmona*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Business Administration, Universidad de Málaga, Avda. de Cervantes, Málaga, Spain cristina.acedo@uma.es https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cristina-Acedo-Carmona/research
Antoni Gomila
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Carretera de Valldemossa, Palma, Spain toni.gomila@uib.cat https://antonigomila.wordpress.com
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

Drawing on our previous work on human trust networks, we provide further evidence of how group structure can foster group cohesion. But this work also raises doubts about two central tenets of the target paper: (1) the role assigned to cognitive abilities in group cohesion and stabilization; and (2) the emphasis on group size as the critical variable.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Acedo-Carmona, C. & Gomila, A. (2013a). Confianza y cooperación. Una perspectiva evolutiva. CONTRASTES. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, suplemento 18, 221–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acedo-Carmona, C. & Gomila, A. (2013b). Trust and cooperation: A new experimental approach. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1299, 7783.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acedo-Carmona, C. & Gomila, A. (2014). Personal trust increases cooperation beyond general trust. PLoS ONE, 9(8), e105559, 110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Acedo-Carmona, C. & Gomila, A. (2015a). Deciding to cooperate in Northern Ghana: Trust as an evolutionary constraint across cultural diversity. Spanish Journal of Psychology, 18, e91,116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acedo-Carmona, C. & Gomila, A. (2015b). Trust matters: A cross-cultural comparison of Northern Ghana and Oaxaca groups. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Acedo-Carmona, C., Munar, E. & Gomila, A. (2018). Trust-based altruism facing new contexts: The Vyegwa-Gika pygmies from Burundi. PLoS ONE, 13(10), e0204321,113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Acedo-Carmona, C. & Gomila, A. (2019). Personal trust extends cooperation beyond trustees: A Mexico study. International Journal of Psychology, 54(5), 687704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez-Rodriguez, U., Battiston, F., de Arruda, G. F., Moreno, Y., Perc, M., & Latora, V. (2021). Evolutionary dynamics of higher-order interactions in social networks. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(5), 586595.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barbero, F., Mannino, G., & Casacci, L. P. (2023). The role of biogenic amines in social insects: With a special focus on ants. Insects, 14(4), 386.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, L. A., & Byrne, R. W. (2010). Imitation: What animal imitation tells us about animal cognition. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(5), 685695.Google ScholarPubMed
Bhoopchand, A., Brownfield, B., Collister, A., Dal Lago, A., Edwards, A., Everett, R., Fréchette, A., Oliveira, Y. G., Hughes, E., Mathewson, K. W., Mendolicchio, P., Pawar, J., Pȋslar, M., Platonov, A., Senter, E., Singh, S., Zacherl, A., & Zhang, L. M. (2023). Learning few-shot imitation as cultural transmission. Nature Communications, 14, 7536.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chae, J., Kim, K., Kim, Y., Lim, G., Kim, D., & Kim, H. (2022). Ingroup favoritism overrides fairness when resources are limited. Scientific reports, 12(1), 4560.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davidson, L. J., & Satta, M. (2021). Justified social distrust. In Social trust (pp. 122148). Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dignath, D., Born, G., Eder, A., Topolinski, S., & Pfister, R. (2021). Imitation of action-effects increases social affiliation. Psychological Research, 85, 19221933.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dignath, D., Lotze-Hermes, P., Farmer, H., & Pfister, R. (2018). Contingency and contiguity of imitative behaviour affect social affiliation. Psychological Research, 82, 819831.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dreyer, T., Haluts, A., Korman, A., Gov, N., Fonio, E. & Feinerman, O. (2025). Comparing cooperative geometric puzzle solving in ants versus humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 122 (1) e2414274121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunbar, R. I. (2025). Why friendship and loneliness affect our health. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1545(1), 114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frank, R. H. (1993). The strategic role of the emotions: Reconciling over-and undersocialized accounts of behavior. Rationality and Society, 5(2), 160184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jablonski, N. G. (2021). Social and affective touch in primates and its role in the evolution of social cohesion. Neuroscience, 464, 117125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
La Macchia, S. T., Louis, W. R., Hornsey, M. J., & Leonardelli, G. J. (2016). In small we trust: Lay theories about small and large groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(10), 13211334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mizumoto, N., Lee, S. B., Valentini, G., Chouvenc, T., & Pratt, S. C. (2021). Coordination of movement via complementary interactions of leaders and followers in termite mating pairs. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 288(1954), 20210998.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morris-Drake, A., Kennedy, P., Braga Goncalves, I., & Radford, A. N. (2022). Variation between species, populations, groups and individuals in the fitness consequences of out-group conflict. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 377(1851), 20210148.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Operario, D., & Fiske, S. T. (1999). Social cognition permeates social psychology: Motivated mental processes guide the study of human social behavior. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2(1), 6378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Manrique, A., & Gomila, A. (2018). The comparative study of empathy: Sympathetic concern and empathic perspective-taking in non-human animals. Biological Reviews, 93(1), 248269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pérez-Manrique, A., & Gomila, A. (2022). Emotional contagion in nonhuman animals: A review. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 13(1), e1560.Google ScholarPubMed
Pernal, S. F. (2021). The social life of honey bees. Veterinary Clinics: Food Animal Practice, 37(3), 387400.Google ScholarPubMed
Sato, K. (1988) Trust and group size in a social dilemma. Japanese Psychological Research, 30(2), 8893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, A., Michels, C., Burgmer, P., Mussweiler, T., Ockenfels, A., & Hofmann, W. (2021). Trust in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(1), 95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whiten, A. (2000). Primate culture and social learning. Cognitive Science, 24(3), 477508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A., & van de Waal, E. (2017). Social learning, culture and the ‘socio-cultural brain’ of human and non-human primates. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 82, 5875.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed