0.7 Music, biological evolution, and the brain  (Page 5/30)

A third set of adaptationist proposals concerns possible benefits of music to group cohesion. Humans, like most other primates, live in groups where individual competition is balanced with cooperation. Humans are unusual, however, in having relatively low degrees of in-group genetic relatedness (due to high gene flow between groups), yet depending to a large degree on in-group cooperation in order to survive and outcompete other groups (Richerson and Boyd, 2005). There has been much recent interest in the idea that music may have served as a mechanism to promote social cohesion within groups (e.g., Brown, 2000(b)). This idea was first clearly articulated by Roederer (1984), who pointed to “the value of music as a means of transmitting information on emotional states and its effect in congregating and behaviorally equalizing masses of people.” Dunbar (in press) has argued that group singing and dancing replaced physical grooming in ancestral human groups, when increasing group size made physical grooming of allies impractical. According to this view, song and dance led to endorphin release (mimicking the neural effects of physical grooming). This in turn promoted bonding, because endorphins, “as a byproduct of their role in pain control…have the property of making us feel warm and well disposed towards others who share…the experience that stimulates their production” (cf. Cohen et al., 2009, Kosfeld et al., 2005).

One appeal of the social cohesion idea is that music is often a social activity among humans, especially in small-scale cultures, and experimental work suggests that musical group activities promote cooperation between group members on subsequent nonmusical tasks (e.g., Wiltermuth and Heath, 2009; Kirschner and Tomasello, in press). Furthermore, music has certain design features that distinguish it from language, such as discrete pitches (allowing voices to blend together in song) and a distinct beat (enabling synchronized movement through time), which facilitate coordination between individuals and can promote a shared sense of identity and purpose (McNeill, 1995; Bispham, 2006).

Social cohesion hypotheses are currently a focus of much interest within music cognition, mirroring a growing interest within biology in natural selection at the level of social groups (e.g., Wilson and Wilson, 2007; Wilson et al., 2008). Several variant hypotheses have developed. Cross (2009), for example, draws on ethnomusicological literature and emphasizes music’s efficacy in managing situations of social uncertainty, i.e., situations in which linguistic interaction might give rise to conflict. He also emphasizes the role of music as a training ground for social cognition (cf. Boyd, 2009). Merker (2000), in contrast, draws on observations of chimpanzee group vocal displays and theorizes that music may have originated in our ancestors from synchronous calls aimed at mate attraction (see also Merker et al., 2009). Hagen and Hammerstein (2009) draw on comparative data from nonhuman primates and carnivorous mammals thought to be ecologically similar to human ancestors, and suggest that music may have arisen from group vocal territorial advertisements (for antecedents of this idea, see Geissmann, 2000).