Peperkoorn, Leonard, Becker, D. Vaughn, Balliet, Daniel, Columbus, Simon, Molho, Catherine and Van Lange, Paul A.M. (2020) The prevalence of dyads in social life. Plos One, vol. 15 (n° 12).

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Abstract

A salient objective feature of the social environment in which people find themselves is
group size. Knowledge of group size is highly relevant to behavioural scientists given that
humans spend considerable time in social settings and the number of others influences
much of human behaviour. What size of group do people actually look for and encounter in
everyday life? Here we report four survey studies and one experience-sampling study (total
N = 4,398) which provide evidence for the predominance of the dyad in daily life. Relative to
larger group sizes, dyads are most common across a wide range of activities (e.g., conversations,
projects, holidays, movies, sports, bars) obtained from three time moments (past
activities, present, and future activities), sampling both mixed-sex and same-sex groups,
with three different methodological approaches (retrospective reports, real-time data capture,
and preference measures) in the United States and the Netherlands. We offer four
mechanisms that may help explain this finding: reciprocity, coordination, social exclusion,
and reproduction. The present findings advance our understanding of how individuals organize
themselves in everyday life.