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The Neurosociology of Reward Release, Repetition, and Social Emergence

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Handbook of Neurosociology

Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research ((HSSR))

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Abstract

The neurosciences have identified three different patterns of reward release in the human body. The three patterns revolve around what to do with repeated attractive stimuli and arouser variety. These patterns are associated with three human social structures not seen in other primate species—religion, ascriptive inequality, and serial novelty in economic production. This association is not coincidental. The emergence of these three social structures is based in part on a common underlying dynamic in which humans take advantage of these reward release patterns to create special packages of stimuli that are able to trigger yet more rewards from the body. There is a social evolutionary sequence in the emergence of these social structures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5S 2J4

    Michael Hammond

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  1. Michael Hammond
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Correspondence to Michael Hammond .

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  1. Department of Sociology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    David D. Franks

  2. Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    Jonathan H. Turner

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Hammond, M. (2013). The Neurosociology of Reward Release, Repetition, and Social Emergence. In: Franks, D.D., Turner, J.H. (eds) Handbook of Neurosociology. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4473-8_20

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