ArticleNature human behaviour2025
The conceptual structure of human relationships across modern and historical cultures.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Why human societies adopt rigid moral rules: The efficiency-robustness trade-off.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Antagonism shapes social maps in the human brain.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Expectations of Reciprocal Generosity Are Specific to Equal Relationships.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Investigating the Structure of Emotion: Tools, Pitfalls and Recommendations.Affective science · 2025Article
- Abstract word dropout and cross-speaker misalignment of word concreteness are features of conversation in aging.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2025Article
- Potential for the medial prefrontal cortex to link mentalizing and attachment schemas.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A defining characteristic of social complexity in Homo sapiens is the diversity of our relationships. We build connections of various types in our families, workplaces, neighbourhoods and online communities. How do we make sense of such complex systems of human relationships? The basic organization of relationships has long been studied in the social sciences, but no consensus has been reached. Here, by using online surveys, laboratory cognitive tasks and natural language processing in diverse modern cultures across the world (n = 20,427) and ancient cultures spanning 3,000 years of history, we examined universality and cultural variability in the ways that people conceptualize relationships. We discovered a universal representational space for relationship concepts, comprising five principal dimensions (formality, activeness, valence, exchange and equality) and three core categories (hostile, public and private relationships). Our work reveals the fundamental cognitive constructs and cultural principles of human relationship knowledge and advances our understanding of human sociality.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.