The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
Now an important feature of biology generally, but in particular, as it relates to social bonding, is that the neural circuits meaning the brain areas and neurons and the hormones, things like oxytocin, which we'll talk about today, and the other chemicals in the brain and body that are responsible for the process we call social bonding are not unique to particular social bonds, they are generic.
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And as we will soon discover, there specific components within the neural circuits of your brain that are responsible for social bonding that allow you to place subjective labels on why you are doing certain things and to rewire the neural circuits for social bonding.
So we don't have 12 different circuits in the brain and body for different types of social bonds, we have one, and there's some universal features that underlie all forms of social bonds.
Today, what I've really tried to illustrate is that there are a common set of biological, neurochemical and hormonal underpinnings to what we call social bonding. And so, while it is complex and it is subjective, it involves the hierarchies, it involves our previous upbringing, it involves our goals etc. It is not infinitely complex and in that sense it is tractable.