Together: Why Social Connection Holds the Key to Better Health, Higher Performance, and Greater Happiness

by Vivek H. Murthy

As humans developed, evolutionary pressure selected for more cooperation because of the advantages it conferred. Cooperation made it possible to plan for the future. Division of labor became feasible. In groups, our hominid ancestors could take turns keeping watch for wolves or sabretooths, and if they were attacked, they could organize to fight back, increasing their chances of overpowering the tiger and saving one another. They could pool the food they hunted and gathered, making it less likely that any individual would starve from day to day. As an early human, you soon learned that your odds of being attacked or of starving would increase dramatically if you became separated from your people. But that wasn’t the only reason to stick together. Connecting in groups also provided the numbers and security for individuals to mate, which enabled the tribe to multiply and endure. Cooperation further helped safeguard the tribe’s survival through extended families of trusted adults who shared the responsibility of parenting. It made for efficiency when the work of teaching and protecting the tribe’s children was a communal rather than a private enterprise. So, it wasn’t only the individual whose survival depended on social connection, but our entire species. Beyond basic survival, though, connection increased the rate of human innovation and empowered the tribe’s creativity. “We’re the only animal on the planet,” Bill told me, “that goes out of its way to share the contents of ...