# Social Grooming **Entity class:** Affiliative behavior **Domain:** Primatology / social bonding **Maturity:** Developing ## Definition **Social grooming** is bodily care directed toward another member of a social group. In primates it can support hygiene, affiliation, tension reduction, alliance maintenance, and relationship repair. ## Scale Transition Physical grooming is time-intensive and dyadic. Accounts of human ritual evolution ask how vocalization, laughter, music, dance, feasting, and synchronized activity may extend bonding beyond the number of relationships that can be maintained by touch alone. ## Evidence Boundary The existence of bonding functions does not make ritual reducible to grooming. Similar social effects can arise through mechanisms that differ in history, meaning, and cultural organization. ## Relationships - **Evolutionary account:** [[wiki/Robin Dunbar|Robin Dunbar]] and [[wiki/How Religion Evolved|How Religion Evolved]]. - **Status context:** [[wiki/Primate Rank-Maintenance|Primate Rank-Maintenance]] and [[wiki/Primate Politics|Primate Politics]]. - **Comparative article:** [[blog/20261007 - The Prayers of Primates|The Prayers of Primates]].