Sociobiology

//ˌsəʊ.si.əʊ.baɪˈɒ.lə.d͡ʒi// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The science that applies the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of social behaviour in both humans and animals. uncountable, usually

    "Sociobiology forms a unifying theory of the social interactions in the human and in the animal world. Its principle unifying human and animal societies is the maximisation of genetic fitness by the individual."

  2. 2
    the branch of biology that conducts comparative studies of the social organization of animals (including human beings) with regard to its evolutionary history wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
biosociology

Example

More examples

"Sociobiology forms a unifying theory of the social interactions in the human and in the animal world. Its principle unifying human and animal societies is the maximisation of genetic fitness by the individual."

Etymology

From socio- + biology, popularized by E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.