Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T09:44:47.137Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 13 - The Social Function of Alcohol from an Evolutionary Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2022

By
Robin I. M. Dunbar
Edited by
Riadh Abed  and
Paul St John-Smith
Riadh Abed
Affiliation:
Mental Health Tribunals, Ministry of Justice, UK
Paul St John-Smith
Affiliation:
Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, UK
Get access

Summary

Humans and alcohol share a deep evolutionary history: our capacity to convert alcohol into useable sugars is a trait we share with the African great apes (gorillas and chimpanzees) and is unique to this taxonomic family among the primates. Although the archaeological record only allows us to date the production of alcohol back about 9,000 years (by which time it is already on an industrial scale), a cottage industry of alcohol production must date back a great deal further. With the exception of where its consumption has been prohibited on religious grounds, alcohol use occurs in every culture and society. Notwithstanding its hedonic properties, its real functional benefit is primarily social, playing an important role in rituals and group bonding. I review studies that demonstrate its functional consequences in terms of social bonding, mediated by alcohol’s ability to trigger the brain’s endorphin system. The endorphin system is the central basis for social bonding in primates. The health and other benefits that arise from social bonding are considerable.

Keywords

alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH)endorphinsfriendshiphealth benefitsmental healthsocial bonding
Type
Chapter
Information
Evolutionary Psychiatry
Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
 , pp. 202 - 213
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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.)

References

Andrews, P. and Van Couvering, J. A. (1975). Palaeoenvironments in the East African Miocene. In: Szalay, F. S. (ed.), Approaches to Primate Paleobiology, Vol. 5. Basel: Karger, pp. 62–103.Google Scholar
Björnsdotter, M., Löken, L., Olausson, H., Vallbo, Å. and Wessberg, J. (2009). Somatotopic organization of gentle touch processing in the posterior insular cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 29: 9314–9320.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boyadjieva, N., Dokur, M., Advis, J. P., Meadows, G. G. and Sarkar, D. K. (2001). Chronic ethanol inhibits NK cell cytolytic activity. Role of opioid peptide-endorphin. Journal of Immunology 167: 5645–5652.Google Scholar
Britton, A., Singh-Manoux, A. and Marmot, M. (2004). Alcohol consumption and cognitive function in the Whitehall II Study. American Journal of Epidemiology 160: 240–247.Google Scholar
Cameron, E. Z., Setsaas, T. H. and Linklater, W. L. (2009). Social bonds between unrelated females increase reproductive success in feral horses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106: 13850–13853.Google Scholar
Carlyle, M., Dumay, N., Roberts, K., McAndrew, A., Stevens, T., Lawn, W. and Morgan, C.J. (2017). Improved memory for information learnt before alcohol use in social drinkers tested in a naturalistic setting. Scientific Reports 7: 6213.Google Scholar
Carrigan, M. (2019). Hominoid adaptation to dietary ethanol. In: Hockings, K. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (eds.), Alcohol and Humans: A Long and Social Affair. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 24–44.Google Scholar
Carrigan, M. A., Uryasev, O., Frye, C. B., Eckman, B. L., Myers, C. R., Hurley, T. D. and Benner, S. A. (2015). Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112: 458–463.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Charles, S. J., Farias, M., van Mulukom, V., Saraswati, A., Dein, S., Watts, F. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (2020). Blocking mu-opioid receptors inhibits social bonding in rituals. Biology Letters 16: 20200485.Google Scholar
Charles, S. J., van Mulukom, V., Farias, M., Brown, J. E., Delmonte, R., Maraldi, E., et al. (under review). Religious rituals increase social bonding and pain threshold.Google Scholar
Chou, A., Stewart, S., Wild, R. and Bloom, J. (2012). Social support and survival in young women with breast carcinoma. Psycho-Oncology 21: 125–133.Google Scholar
Crockford, C., Wittig, R. M., Whitten, P. L., Seyfarth, R. M. and Cheney, D. L. (2008). Social stressors and coping mechanisms in wild female baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus). Hormones and Behavior 53: 254–265.Google Scholar
Dietrich, O. and Dietrich, L. (2019). Rituals and feasting as incentives for cooperative action at early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe. In: Hockings, K. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (eds.), Alcohol and Humans: A Long and Social Affair. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 93–114.Google Scholar
Dolder, P. C., Holze, F., Liakoni, E., Harder, S., Schmid, Y. and Liechti, M. E. (2017). Alcohol acutely enhances decoding of positive emotions and emotional concern for positive stimuli and facilitates the viewing of sexual images. Psychopharmacology 234: 41–51.Google Scholar
Dominguez, S. and Arford, T. (2010). It is all about who you know: social capital and health in low-income communities. Health Sociology Review 19: 114–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (1980). Determinants and evolutionary consequences of dominance among female gelada baboons. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 7: 253–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2009). Why only humans have language. In: Botha, R. and Knight, C. (eds.), The Prehistory of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 12–35.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2017). Breaking bread: the functions of social eating. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 3: 198–211.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2018). The anatomy of friendship. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22: 32–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2020a). Religiosity and religious attendance as factors in wellbeing and social engagement. Religion Brain and Behavior 11: 17–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2020b). Structure and function in human and primate social networks: Implications for diffusion, network stability and health. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 476: 20200446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2022). The Evolution of Religion. London: Pelican.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. (in press). Laughter and its role in the evolution of human social bonding. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. and Hockings, K. (eds.) (2019). Introduction. In: Hockings, K. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (eds.), Alcohol and Humans: A Long and Social Affair. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–8.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M. and Shultz, S. (2010). Bondedness and sociality. Behaviour 147: 775–803.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M., Baron, R., Frangou, A., Pearce, E., van Leeuwen, E.J.C., Stow, J., et al. (2012). Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 27: 1161–1167.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M., Frangou, A., Grainger, F. and Pearce, E. (2021). Laughter influences social bonding but not prosocial generosity to friends and strangers. PLoS ONE 16: e0256229.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M., Launay, J., Wlodarski, R., Robertson, C., Pearce, E., Carney, J. and MacCarron, P. (2017). Functional benefits of (modest) alcohol consumption. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 3: 118–133.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M., Teasdale, B., Thompson, J., Budelmann, F., Duncan, S., van Emde Boas, E. and Maguire, L. (2016). Emotional arousal when watching drama increases pain threshold and social bonding. Royal Society Open Science 3: 160288.Google Scholar
Espeland, M. A., Gu, L., Masaki, K. H., Langer, R. D., Coker, L. H., Stefanick, M. L., et al. (2005). Association between reported alcohol intake and cognition: results from the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study. American Journal of Epidemiology 161: 228–238.Google Scholar
Fleagle, J. G. (2013). Primate Adaptation and Evolution, 3rd ed. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Frère, C. H., Krützen, M., Mann, J., Connor, R. C., Bejder, L. and Sherwin, W. B. (2010). Social and genetic interactions drive fitness variation in a free-living dolphin population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107: 19949–19954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gianoulakis, C. (2009). Endogenous opioids and addiction to alcohol and other drugs of abuse. Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry 9: 999–1015.Google Scholar
Gonzales, R. A. and Weiss, F. (1998). Suppression of ethanol-reinforced behavior by naltrexone is associated with attenuation of the ethanol-induced increase in dialysate dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens. Journal of Neuroscience 18: 10663–10671.Google Scholar
Guerra-Doce, E. (2015). The origins of inebriation: archaeological evidence of the consumption of fermented beverages and drugs in prehistoric Eurasia. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 22: 751–782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haseeb, S., Alexander, B. and Baranchuk, A. (2017). Wine and cardiovascular health: a comprehensive review. Circulation 136: 1434–1448.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayden, B., Canuel, N. and Shanse, J. (2013). What was brewing in the Natufian? An archaeological assessment of brewing technology in the Epipaleolithic. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 20: 102–150.Google Scholar
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. and Bradley Layton, J. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine 7: e1000316.Google Scholar
House, J. (2001). Social isolation kills, but how and why? Psychosomatic Medicine 63: 273–274.Google Scholar
Inagaki, T. K., Ray, L. A., Irwin, M. R., Way, B. M. and Eisenberger, N. I. (2016). Opioids and social bonding: naltrexone reduces feelings of social connection. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11: 728–735.Google Scholar
Lang, I., Wallace, R. B., Huppert, F. A. and Melzer, D. (2007). Moderate alcohol consumption in older adults is associated with better cognition and well-being than abstinence. Age and Ageing 36: 256–261.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liu, L. and Newschaffer, C. J. (2011). Impact of social connections on risk of heart disease, cancer and all-cause mortality among elderly Americans: findings from the Second Longitudinal Study of Aging (LSOA II). Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 53: 168–173.Google Scholar
Mandler, R. N., Biddison, W. E., Mandler, R. and Serrate, S. A. (1986). Endorphin augments the cytolytic activity and interferon production of natural killer cells. Journal of Immunology 136: 934–939.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manninen, S., Tuominen, L., Dunbar, R. I. M., Karjalainen, T., Hirvonen, J., Arponen, E., et al. (2017). Social laughter triggers endogenous opioid release in humans. Journal of Neuroscience 37: 6125–6131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Massen, J., Sterck, E. and de Vos, H. (2010). Close social associations in animals and humans: functions and mechanisms of friendship. Behaviour 147: 1379–1412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGovern, P. E. (2019). Uncorking the past: alcoholic fermentation as humankind’s first biotechnology. In: Hockings, K. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (eds.), Alcohol and Humans: A Long and Social Affair. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 81–92.Google Scholar
McShane, A. (2019). Through the drinking glass: a long history of pints and performative materialities in England. In: Hockings, K. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (eds.) Alcohol and Humans: A Long and Social Affair. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 178–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Min, S.-Y., Whitecraft, E., Rothbard, A. B. and Salzer, M. S. (2007). Peer support for persons with co-occurring disorders and community tenure: a survival analysis. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 30: 207–213.Google Scholar
Modesto-Lowe, V. and Fritz, E. M. (2005). The opioidergic–alcohol link. CNS Drugs 19: 693–707.Google Scholar
Nummenmaa, L., Tuominen, L., Dunbar, R. I. M., Hirvonen, J., Manninen, S., Arponen, E., et al. (2016). Reinforcing social bonds by touching modulates endogenous µ-opioid system activity in humans. NeuroImage 138: 242–247.Google Scholar
Nuñez, C. M. V., Adelman, J. S. and Rubenstein, D. I. (2015). Sociality increases juvenile survival after a catastrophic event in the feral horse (Equus caballus). Behavioral Ecology 26: 138–147.Google Scholar
O’Keefe, J. H., Bhatti, S. K., Bajwa, A., DiNicolantonio, J. J. and Lavie, C. J. (2014). Alcohol and cardiovascular health: the dose makes the poison… or the remedy. Mayo Clinic Proceedings 89: 382–393.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olausson, H., Wessberg, J., Morrison, I., McGlone, F. and Vallbo, A. (2010). The neurophysiology of unmyelinated tactile afferents. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 34: 185–191.Google Scholar
Pearce, E., Launay, J. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (2015). The ice-breaker effect: singing mediates fast social bonding. Royal Society Open Science 2: 150221.Google Scholar
Pinquart, M. and Duberstein, P. R. (2010). Association of social networks with cancer mortality: a meta-analysis. Critical Review of Oncology and Haematology 75: 122–137.Google Scholar
Reblin, M. and Uchino, B. N. (2008). Social and emotional support and its implication for health. Current Opinion in Psychiatry 21: 201–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, A. J., McDonald, J. S., Heyser, C. J., Kieffer, B. L., Matthes, H. W., Koob, G. F. and Gold, L. H. (2000). μ-Opioid receptor knockout mice do not self-administer alcohol. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics 293: 1002–1008.Google Scholar
Rodriguez-Laso, A., Zunzunegui, M. V. and Otero, A. (2007). The effect of social relationships on survival in elderly residents of a Southern European community: a cohort study. BMC Geriatrics 7: 19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rusch, N. (2020). Controlled fermentation, honey, bees and alcohol: archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence from southern Africa. South African Humanities 33: 1–31.Google Scholar
Sabia, S., Fayosse, A., Dumurgier, J., Dugravot, A., Akbaraly, T., Britton, A., et al. (2018). Alcohol consumption and risk of dementia: 23 year follow-up of Whitehall II cohort study. BMJ 362: k2927.Google Scholar
Santini, Z., Jose, P., Koyanagi, A., Meilstrup, C., Nielsen, L., Madsen, K., et al. (2021). The moderating role of social network size in the temporal association between formal social participation and mental health: a longitudinal analysis using two consecutive waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Social Psychiatry and Psychological Epidemiology 56: 417–428.Google Scholar
Sarkar, D. K., Sengupta, A., Zhang, C., Boyadjieva, N. and Murugan, S. (2012). Opiate antagonist prevents μ- and δ-opiate receptor dimerization to facilitate ability of agonist to control ethanol-altered natural killer cell functions and mammary tumor growth. Journal of Biological Chemistry 287: 16734–16747.Google Scholar
Silk, J. (2002). Using the ‘F’-word in primatology. Behaviour 139: 421–446.Google Scholar
Silk, J. B., Alberts, S. C. and Altmann, J. (2003). Social bonds of female baboons enhance infant survival. Science 302: 1232–1234.Google Scholar
Silk, J. B., Beehner, J. C., Bergman, T. J., Crockford, C., Engh, A. L., Moscovice, L. R., et al. (2009). The benefits of social capital: close social bonds among female baboons enhance offspring survival. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 276: 3099–3104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Silk, J. B., Beehner, J. C., Bergman, T. J., Crockford, C., Engh, A. L., Moscovice, L. R., et al. (2010). Strong and consistent social bonds enhance the longevity of female baboons. Current Biology 20: 1359–1361.Google Scholar
Smith, K. P. and Christakis, N. A. (2008). Social networks and health. American Journal of Sociology 34: 405–429.Google Scholar
Stampfer, M. J., Kang, J. H., Chen, J., Cherry, R. and Grodstein, F. (2005). Effects of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive function in women. New England Journal of Medicine 352: 245–253.Google Scholar
Sternberg, R. J. (1997). Construct validation of a triangular love scale. European Journal of Social Psychology 27: 313–335.Google Scholar
Sutcliffe, A., Dunbar, R. I. M., Binder, J. and Arrow, H. (2012). Relationships and the social brain: integrating psychological and evolutionary perspectives. British Journal of Psychology 103: 149–168.Google Scholar
Suvilehto, J., Glerean, E., Dunbar, R. I. M., Hari, R. and Nummenmaa, L. (2015). Topography of social touching depends on emotional bonds between humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112: 13811–13816.Google Scholar
Suvilehto, J., Nummenmaa, L., Harada, T., Dunbar, R. I. M., Hari, R., Turner, R., et al. (2019). Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286: 20190467.Google Scholar
Tarr, B., Launay, J., Cohen, E. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (2015). Synchrony and exertion during dance independently raise pain threshold and encourage social bonding. Biology Letters 11: 20150767.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tarr, B., Launay, J. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (2016). Silent disco: dancing in synchrony leads to elevated pain thresholds and social closeness. Evolution and Human Behavior 37: 343–349.Google Scholar
Tarr, B., Launay, J. and Dunbar, R. I. M. (2017). Naltrexone blocks endorphins released when dancing in synchrony. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 3: 241–254.Google Scholar
Tilvis, R., Routasalo, P., Karppinen, H., Strandberg, T., Kautiainen, H., and Pitkala, K. (2012). Social isolation, social activity and loneliness as survival indicators in old age: a nationwide survey with a 7-year follow up. European Geriatric Medicine 3: 18–22.Google Scholar
Tuulari, J. J., Tuominen, L., de Boer, F. E., Hirvonen, J., Helin, S., Nuutila, P. and Nummenmaa, L. (2017). Feeding releases endogenous opioids in humans. Journal of Neuroscience 37: 8284–8291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weinstein, D., Launay, J., Pearce, E., Dunbar, R. I. M. and Stewart, L. (2016). Singing and social bonding: changes in connectivity and pain threshold as a function of group size. Evolution and Human Behavior 37: 152–158.Google Scholar
Wittig, R. M., Crockford, C., Lehmann, J., Whitten, P. L., Seyfarth, R. M. and Cheney, D. L. (2008). Focused grooming networks and stress alleviation in wild female baboons. Hormones and Behavior 54: 170–177.Google Scholar
Wrangham, R. W., Conklin-Brittain, N. L. and Hunt, K. D. (1998). Dietary response of chimpanzees and cercopithecines to seasonal variation in fruit abundance. I. Antifeedants. International Journal of Primatology 19: 949–970.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×