We present several arguments for the preeminence of social interactions in determining and giving shape to societies. In our view, a society can emerge from social interaction and relationship patterns without the need for establishing an a priori limit on who actually belongs to it. Markers of group identity are one element among many that allow societies to persist.

Identity formation and maintenance is a complex process operating at many levels, with identity markers and affiliations often contested, negotiated, rejected, revised, and replaced, both within and between groups, by parties with competing interests. This needs to be considered if identity is to serve as a useful criterion for defining society.

Moffett presents a robust proposal for a comparative study of societies as the basis for studying the human condition and behavior. This theoretical framework has implications for the study of deceptive behavior. I discuss how this framework might describe the adaptation of deceptive behavior within human societies and shed light on the dynamics of collaborative deceptive behavior through interpersonal commitment.

A clear definition of society helps prevent conceptual misunderstanding. When making practical measurement of societies, it is worth noting that social complexity is actually a jagged concept that encompasses multiple weakly correlated dimensions. Understanding such jaggedness assists interpretation of the divergence between anonymous societies and the social brain hypothesis.

To understand the nature and evolution of different kinds of societies, we must characterize the psychological mechanisms members use to identify who belongs. Across both individual recognition- and anonymous-societies, these range from physiological responses to individuals up to powerful conceptual representations of the group that license generalization and novel predictions. Sketching these mechanisms helps us understand the transition from the individual recognition societies of our ape ancestors to uniquely human forms of anonymous society.

Moffett contends that societies should be considered the “primary” group with respect to their social ramifications. Although intriguing, this claim suffers from insufficient clarity and evidence. Rather, if any group is to be crowned supreme it should surely be the family, with its unique capacity to encourage pro-group behavior, shape other groups, and provide meaning.

We expand on Moffett's discussion of societies in the context of multilevel social systems, for which Moffett proposes the core unit to constitute a society. Moffett's definition of a society, however, suggests that it is more parsimonious to assign this label to the upper (band) level. An understanding of multilevel systems is critical for informing discussions about what a society is.

Moffett's article asserts that human societies are distinct from other social groups because they must maintain control over specific territories. In our commentary, we challenge this argument, aiming to enrich it by highlighting the pivotal role of history and collective memories and their underestimated significance in shaping societies across time and beyond territorial ownership and resource control.

Moffett's paper is an important contribution to the multidisciplinary discussion of the notion of “society.” This comment aims to clarify and nuance some points considered important from an anthropological perspective. In particular, it stresses the importance of controlled social interaction and historical dynamics.

Moffett's definition of society is broadly applicable to all group-living animals from insects to nation states. Presenting examples from primates, I illustrate difficulties in defining boundaries between societies and even what societies defend to demonstrate the complexity of using an understanding of the processes effecting primate societies to understand those effecting human societies. However, finding similarities and differences in processes shaping societies is intriguing and Moffett's definition provides an excellent starting point.

Moffett's interdisciplinary definition of society seeks to distinguish itself from the prevalent, political understanding of the term. Through engagement with international relations literature, we outline how Moffett's proposed “society” results in a recapitulation of the definition of a nation-state. We suggest that this tension could be addressed by adopting a functional, rather than identity-based, approach.

We embrace Moffett's call for more rigorous definitions of social organizations but raise two intersecting critiques: (1) The spaces controlled by societies are not exclusively physical, and (2) cooperation is required to maintain control over spaces, physical or otherwise. We discuss examples of non-physical societal spaces across species and highlight the top-down group cooperation challenge that is maintaining them.

We examine the similarities and differences between Moffett's conceptualization of society and the core configuration model of social groupings. Anonymous societies correspond to the macrodeme level of coordination in the core configuration model, and recognizing that identity-based groups are defined by shared distinctiveness rather than territory encourages a more organic understanding of social groups.

We discuss some of the most central problems and concepts elaborated within the social sciences, especially sociology, which are not or only tangentially exposed by Moffett. Then, we will exemplify of how identity, which is a central constituent of Moffett's definition of society, cannot be opposed to interaction despite his claims. Rather it is to be studied as interactional achievement.

While ambitious, interesting, and generally corresponding to usage in archaeology history, and anthropology, Moffett's paper seems more philosophy of science (conceptual analysis) than science (their use in explanations). It avoids explanations of how “markers of identity” and “their recognition” are acquired (e.g., by biological evolution, individual learning, social learning, or sociocultural evolution) and what the concept of “a society” explains.

Moffett's definition of societies could be augmented by recognizing society's organizing systems that coordinate diverse individuals' behavior for collective good. Viewing humans as cultural animals indicates three reasons for ever larger societies: More shared information, bigger and better marketplace for exchange, and military superiority in numbers. Sports teams are societies offering a promising venue for empirical work.

If human societies are understood as identity groups, then our psychology should include design for the production and detection of credible identity signals. We argue that vocalizations are ideal identity signals because the human auditory system is sensitive to subtle acoustic features; vocal signals are efficient; and speech and song are highly complex, enabling the embedding therein of identity signals.

Research in community ecology, anthropology, and ethnoprimatology has identified mixed-species animal groups, and we argue that Moffett's definition of society allows these groups to qualify as societies. The existence of mixed-species society has two implications – that societies are structured by social norms, and that it may be more common to belong to multiple societies than Moffett suggests.

I propose the need to establish a comparative study of societies, conceived of specificially here as bounded groups beyond a simple, immediate family that have the potential to endure for generations, whose constituent individuals recognize one another as members, and that maintain control over a physical space. This definition, with refinements and ramifications I explore, serves for cross-disciplinary research because it applies not just to nations but to diverse hunter–gatherer and tribal groups with a pedigree that likely traces back to the societies of our common ancestor with the chimpanzees. It also applies to groups among other species for which comparison to humans can be instructive. Notably, it describes societies in terms of shared group identification rather than social interactions. An expansive treatment of the topic is overdue given that the concept of a society (even the use of such synonyms as primate “troop”) has fallen out of favor among biologists, resulting in a semantic mess; whereas sociologists rarely consider societies beyond nations, and social psychologists predominantly focus on ethnicities and other component groups of societies. I examine the relevance of societies across realms of inquiry, discussing the ways member recognition is achieved; how societies compare to other organizational tiers; and their permeability, territoriality (allowing for mobile territories), relation to social networks and kinship, and impermanence. We have diverged from our ancestors in generating numerous affiliations within and between societies while straining the expectation of society memberships by assimilating diverse populations. Nevertheless, if, as I propose, societies were the first, and thereafter the primary, ingroups of prehistory, how we came to register society boundaries may be foundational to all human “groupiness.” A discipline-spanning approach to societies should further our understanding of what keeps societies together and what tears them apart.

The target article argued that motivation constructs are treated as black boxes and called for work that specifies the mental computational processes underlying motivated behavior. In response to critical commentaries, we clarify our philosophical standpoint, elaborate on the meaning of mental computational processes and why past work was not sufficient, and discuss the opportunities to expand the scope of the framework.