Just came across this today and thought it was interesting. I just like anything to do with the brain, even in other species.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110405113026.htmI personally think humans rather than having a single social instinct across the population may have multiple social instincts. Saying humans have instincts is not a very popular idea, but I feel we should remain open to the idea.
It is my opinion society is being driven by the social instincts of one group. I refer to the instinct as a hierarchial social instinct. This I believe drives both the trend of forming hierarchy social organization and power structure. In addition, I feel this also may be related to pair bonding. I don't see this one as being similar to either the common chimp and bonobo structures.
Others I feel show more of a bonobo social structure. This one is more egalitarian in nature with both a lack of hierarchial structure and gender bias. I feel this one dominated the human population until more recent times when the population size had grown significantly. I estimate this change started within the last 10 to 20 thousands years.
The reason this interests me is I feel a number of social traits may be a result of this differing social instinct rather than related to the autism spectrum. The article linked to does mention a link between the common chimp social behavior and signs of autism related structures in the brain. However, I believe this is a case of separate but evolutionarily related developments. I feel these are independently inheritable traits.
My primary concern is we may be assuming all humans should live by the same socialization rules and those who do not may be mistakenly assumed to have some other condition. I think some conditions can lead to exaggeration of the socialization instinct, but it is still independently inheritable.
