It was a welcome respite from the acrimony of the political season: Oxford University professor Robert Dunbar told his Nobel Conference audience at Gustavus Adolphus College that if we socialize, are part of a group, we might just be boosting our intelligence.

That comes as welcome news in this political season where we seem to have each party gathering its groups, but, possibly, not being any smarter as a result.

Still, Dunbar’s theory gives great hope for those who gather socially, regularly, in coffeeshops, pubs, churches, schools and community centers. Socializing helps us, Dunbar says, achieve the human hierarchy that allows and indeed requires us to consider others, if only for a moment.

He says this socialization is what makes us better than primates, a kind word for gorillas. We’re better than gorillas because we can climb the ladder of socialization with relative ease. While primates can consider themselves or think of themselves, and think about someone else’s thoughts, they pretty much stop there. They cannot think, on the next level, about what someone else thinks about their thoughts.

With the exception of teenagers possibly, we, as humans, can think of someone other than ourselves. We can consider what someone thinks about what we think. This, of course, is at the heart of political campaigns, and intelligent discourse, though the two seem mutually exclusive at times.

Political campaigns care about what voters think, they only get confused on legitimate and ethical ways to influence that thinking.

That leads us to the question: Are people who run political campaigns better than gorillas? Can they consider how we react to what they think? It’s a legitimate question when they continue to give us messages and don’t seem to care how we respond. Negative advertising is a case in point.

Still, the revelation that our “grouping behavior” makes us smarter than gorillas offers some hope, even in the political season. We can help the campaigns develop as well. We can help them think what we’re thinking of their thoughts when we vote.