Affiliation and Bonding

Humans bond to each other in several ways. The most enduring bonds are kin-related, based on closely shared genes. Mothers bond to their babies and siblings bond to each other.  Friendships are weaker and often temporary bonds that are based on the need to affiliate with others for protection, social status, feeding, sex and fun. Success in business and professions is dependent on affiliations with others. Success depends on what you know, on who you know and how well you are regarded. Affiliations are ephemeral and must be maintained by regular contact, grooming, food sharing, expressions of conformity and concern, and exchange of gifts and favors.

Trust is established over time by regular and reliable maintenance of affiliation. Humans seek bonding with others are distressed when they become isolated. Social conventions rely on bonding. Descriptions such as “love, affection, friendship, loyalty, duty, faith, and obligation” refer to affiliation and bonding. Humans groups employ bonding strategies intentionally – initiating new members into the group with rituals, secrets, symbols, costumes and codes that distinguish members from non-members. Groups emphasize special privileges given to members and resist attempts of outsiders to enjoy these privileges.

The most celebrated bonding is described as "falling in love" and occurs between individuals who are not related. The experience of falling in love is a complex of feelings, emotions, perceptions and cognitions designed to bring to two people together in a tight, exclusive bond that supports reproduction. The essential feature of falling in love is a fascination with another person coupled with a drive to be with them and to protect them. Men often idealize their loved one and suspend business as usual in favor of serving the needs of their potential spouses. Women are overwhelmed with maternal feelings and fantasies of home, the family, and enduring devotion and support of the male. The female tasks are to choose the right male and then motivate and train him to devote all his resources to her and her children.

Dobbs described hominid evolution in terms of an increasing need for affiliation and cooperation. Increasing brain size allowed more complex social relationships to develop. He stated:” members of a group had to be smart enough to balance their individual needs with those of the pack. This meant cooperating and exercising some individual restraint. It also required understanding the behavior of other group members striving not only for safety and food but also access to mates. And it called for comprehending and managing one’s place in an ever-shifting array of alliances that members formed in order not to be isolated within the bigger group.“ 

Despite increased intelligence, every human has a limited ability to form and sustain relationships with other humans. Bonding is the process of forming meaningful and strategic attachments to other humans. While bonding is a natural process, marriage and other rule-based commitments are not. Longer term commitments are contractual. Natural bonds are spontaneous, self-regulating, and are likely to change. The bonding of male and female mates occurs in many species and serves the needs of infant care.

An average “normal” human supports a small number of relationships that have strategic significance in his or her life. These close relationships have different values and represent different investments of time, energy, loyalty and devotion. The deepest bonding occurs when mother and infant are together continuously from birth and mother breast-feeds the infant. Bonds among family members are the most enduring. Bonds to friends, lovers and spouses are the next most significant. Bonds to colleagues, neighbors and even strangers that are admired from a distance are next. 

Because the ability to form close relationships is limited, a simple bonding model might begin by assigning to each person a limited number of bonding tokens that can be invested in relationships. While bonding tokens are not real, they can act metaphorically to illustrate how an individual allocates his or her time, energy and resources among a limited number of other individuals. If you allow, for example, each individual 30 tokens, then up to 30 relationships can be formed. Intimate relationships require more tokens than causal friendships. Bonding tokens are relatively scarce so that competition among relationships is inevitable. Emotions and feelings regulate token investment. We have recognized that jealously is a cognitive-emotional complex that monitors and regulates bonding investments. Hyper-vigilant behavior emerges when bonding tokens are withdrawn. Anger explodes when another human “steals” some of the tokens a spouse or lover has invested in you. A jealous human guards the sexual privileges, property and prestige that bonding tokens represent.

Some relationships are terminated and/or neglected since there are not enough tokens to go around. You could argue about the number of relationships and the number of tokens, but the fact remains that there are limited bonding resources; relationships compete for limited resources. Heavy investment in one person, limits the number of relationships that are possible. You might have a 20-token true love, leaving you only 10 tokens to invest in all remaining possible relationships. 

Order Books: We offer two sources of our books. Alpha Online ships printed books and nutrient formulas to the US and Canada. Persona Digital offers downloads of eBooks, music and other digital documents available to customers all over the world. Click the green order button on the left to order printed book from Alpha Online.  Click the yellow download button on the right to download PDF file from this website (Persona Digital)

Group Dynamics

Group Dynamics is part of the  Psychology & Philosophy series, developed by Persona Digital Books. We encourage readers to quote and paraphrase topics from Group Dynamics published online and expect proper citations to accompany all derivative writings. The author is Stephen Gislason and the publisher is Persona Digital Books. The most recent date of publication is 2010.  The URL to the book description is http://www.personadigital.net/Persona/groupdynamics/