Social Synchronisation

It started with wanting something naughty

Most evenings, at roughly the same sort of time, I develop an urge to eat something.

Not hunger, exactly.

I can have eaten perfectly adequately. My stomach isn’t asking for food. Nevertheless, my brain begins suggesting that this would be an excellent moment to investigate the biscuit cupboard.

The usual explanation would be emotional eating.

So I considered that.

Was I stressed? Sad? Lonely? Trying to comfort myself?

Not particularly.

Sometimes I was perfectly content. I just had that slightly restless evening feeling of wanting… something.

Which made me wonder whether I’d been blaming psychology for something rather more basic.

Perhaps we’re simply programmed to seek certain kinds of reward at particular times of day.

Then the birds got involved

Around dusk, birds change.

Anyone who lives somewhere with a healthy bird population has heard it. As daylight begins to disappear, there’s often a conspicuous burst of activity and noise.

Calling. Gathering. Moving towards roosts. Interacting with other members of the flock.

Obviously, falling light levels influence behaviour. That’s hardly revolutionary. Biological responses to cycles of light and darkness are vastly older than humans, birds or even brains capable of thinking Christ, it’s getting dark.

But something bothered me.

A lot of dusk behaviour in social animals isn’t merely about preparing to sleep.

It’s social.

And that’s when the biscuit problem became considerably more complicated.

What if dusk is socially important?

For a social animal, night creates a transition.

Daytime activity ends. The group gathers or settles. Individuals that have spent time dispersed may come back into proximity before a long period of relative inactivity.

That seems like a potentially useful time to reconnect.

Birds gather and call.

Other social animals groom, settle together or engage in affiliative behaviour.

Humans?

We eat together.

Talk.

Sit around fires.

Go to pubs.

Watch television together.

Play games.

Sing.

Phone people.

Spend time with partners or family.

None of those specific activities needs to be an evolved behaviour. Watching The Chase clearly wasn’t placing much selective pressure on Pleistocene humans.

But perhaps they’re modern ways of satisfying something older.

What if there is a recurring period around dusk or early evening when social animals become more motivated to re-establish connection with the group before settling for the night?

I started calling this idea Social Synchronisation.

Which brings us back to the biscuits

Suppose such an evening affiliative drive exists.

What happens when the expected social reward isn’t available?

Perhaps nothing.

Or perhaps that vague evening restlessness remains:

I want something.

We interpret it as boredom.

And one of the easiest alternative rewards available to a modern human is highly palatable food.

Open cupboard.

Locate biscuits.

Problem apparently solved.

My first thought was therefore that people without partners might be particularly prone to non-hunger-driven evening eating.

Then I remembered my parents and immediately made a hole in my own hypothesis.

They were very much partnered.

They also picked at things in the evening.

But thinking about it more carefully raised a useful distinction.

They were often physically together without interacting very much.

Mum might be knitting or stitching.

Dad would be sprawled on the sofa watching sport, usually accompanied by a tin of beer and a bag of jelly babies.

Same room.

Same evening.

Not necessarily much social engagement.

So perhaps relationship status isn’t the interesting variable at all.

Maybe it’s meaningful social interaction.

A slightly less ridiculous hypothesis emerges

The idea eventually became something like this:

Humans may have a circadian or environmentally cued period around dusk in which motivation for affiliative/social reward increases. When that need isn’t satisfied through meaningful social interaction, other rewarding behaviours — including palatable food — may sometimes substitute for it.

That’s considerably more respectable than:

Maybe I want biscuits because the birds are shouting.

But importantly, it gives us things that could actually be tested.

Does affiliative motivation vary systematically with time of day?

Does meaningful evening social interaction affect subsequent non-hunger-driven food seeking?

Is simply being in somebody else’s presence sufficient, or does interaction matter?

Do solitary and social evening activities produce different effects?

And — the part that originally sent me down this particular rabbit hole — are there meaningful parallels in dusk-associated social behaviour across other species?

There are also plenty of much less exciting explanations to eliminate.

Habit.

Meal timing.

Circadian variation in appetite.

Changes in reward sensitivity.

Fatigue.

Stress.

Learned associations between television and snacks.

Or perhaps humans just really like biscuits.

Any serious investigation would have to separate those from whatever I think I spotted.

Current condition

This may be an interesting hypothesis.

It may be several already-established phenomena wearing a trench coat.

It may be complete bollocks.

Finding out properly would require expertise in chronobiology, behavioural science, evolutionary biology and probably several other fields I do not possess.

Consequently, Social Synchronisation remains where it is.

Still drifting.

Probably indefinitely.

Fancy finding out?

If this overlaps with your field and you have the inclination and resources to investigate it properly, please do.

I’d genuinely like to know whether there’s anything here.

It may already have a perfectly respectable scientific name. It may collapse immediately on contact with data. Either result interests me.

If this particular train of thought contributes meaningfully to your work, though, I’d appreciate an acknowledgement.

Because Snacks and Avian Fuckwittery deserves its place in the scientific record.