Living in social societies creates many benefits to survival. Traditionally it benefitted us in reducing predation risk, increasing access to food and improving offspring care. In the modern world all of these benefits remain true however we often depend on people we don't know to help us in achieving these tasks, additionally the modern world depends on social contact for learning, cooperation and development. Despite these advantages social contact, increases our exposure to pathogens. The behavioural immune system suggests that we have evolved to socially distance from people that are sick, including the development of our emotional 'disgust' for people that are symptomatic. This extends further in some eusocial invertebrate that actually swap mucous to spread antibodies in a immunisation type event. Arguments have also been made that 'sickness behaviour' is also a warning for other to stay away, as we inherently avoid people that show signs of illness.
Discussion questions:
Is our behavioural immune system responses no longer sufficient to prevent disease spread in the societies we live in?
Is there a level of social contact and disease transmission that is beneficial to improve overall immunity to common diseases?
At what point do the benefits of social contacts outweighs the costs of increased disease transmission?
Jack Richardson - Potluck
Link to article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01004/full
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