Humans live in unusually large groups, where relationships are thought to be
maintained through complex socio-communicative abilities. The size and quality
of social networks are associated with health and well-being outcomes throughout
life. However, how some individuals manage to form larger social networks is not
well understood. If socio-communicative traits evolved to form and maintain
relationships, personality traits should be associated with variation in network
size. Here, using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), we
investigate the impact of extraversion, agreeableness, and verbal communication
on network size (N= 5,202) and network size change over time
(N= 1,511) in later life for kin and friend networks.
Higher levels of extraversion and agreeableness were associated with greater
social network sizes but did not predict network size change over 14 years. The
findings are discussed considering the evolutionary hypothesis that
communicative and affiliative traits may have evolved to support the maintenance
of social networks.