title: Sex differences in social focus across the life cycle in humans.
abstract: Age and gender are two important factors that play crucial roles in the way organisms allocate their social effort. In this study, we analyse a large mobile phone dataset to explore the way life history influences human sociality and the way social networks are structured. Our results indicate that these aspects of human behaviour are strongly related to age and gender such that younger individuals have more contacts and, among them, males more than females. However, the rate of decrease in the number of contacts with age differs between males and females, such that there is a reversal in the number of contacts around the late 30s. We suggest that this pattern can be attributed to the difference in reproductive investments that are made by the two sexes. We analyse the inequality in social investment patterns and suggest that the age- and gender-related differences we find reflect the constraints imposed by reproduction in a context where time (a form of social capital) is limited.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science , Aalto University School of Science , PO Box 15400, Aalto 00076, Finland.
authors.forename: Kunal
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bhattacharya
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science , Aalto University School of Science , PO Box 15400, Aalto 00076, Finland.
authors.forename: Asim
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ghosh
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science , Aalto University School of Science , PO Box 15400, Aalto 00076, Finland.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Monsivais
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Aalto University School of Science, PO Box 15400, Aalto 00076, Finland; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK.
authors.forename: Robin I M
authors.initials: RI
authors.lastname: Dunbar
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Aalto University School of Science, PO Box 15400, Aalto 00076, Finland; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK.
authors.forename: Kimmo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kaski
keywords: data science; life history; sex differences; social capital; social investment