Saying “goodbye” to the conundrum of leave-taking: a cross-disciplinary review

Lucy Baehren ()
Additional contact information
Lucy Baehren: University of Oxford

Palgrave Communications, 2022, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Leave-taking behaviours habitually occur before separation from social interaction in most human societies. It is thought to be a human universal, providing ritual brackets around interaction. Despite Knapp’s claim that leave-taking can tell us a good deal about human interaction, the topic remains critically overlooked from an evolutionary perspective. Cross-species data on leave-taking would be key to unveiling its evolutionary history and its role in sociality, but studies focusing on non-human species are rare. Here, leave-taking is reviewed using an evolutionary approach, pitting it against its symmetrical counterpart, greeting, and emphasising the lacunae in research on leave-taking. It is argued that leave-taking is overdue for serious, empirical attention regarding the ways in which leave-taking could contribute to understanding social evolution. Finally, methods are outlined to operationalise the study of leave-taking and propose the use of “levels of separation” to allow comparison of human and non-human species and to expand research efforts.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-022-01061-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:9:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-022-01061-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-022-01061-3

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().