In Case You Missed It…
Humans are social animals, but sociality has both benefits and costs. On the one hand, other people provide safety in numbers, cooperation, care, love, and most of what makes a good life possible. On the other, they’re also potentially sources of infectious microbes. You can reduce your risk of catching something by avoiding close contact - but in doing so, you give up a lot. The question is, then: How do we decide whose germs are worth the risk?
One intriguing possibility is that we have an evolved tendency to risk exposure in proportion to people’s value to us as social partners - in other words, when the benefits are most likely to outweigh the costs. Earlier research offered some support for this idea, but it was unclear how widely it applied. If the tendency is part of human nature, we’d expect to see it across widely disparate societies. Do we, though?