Study: Dunbar’s number is wrong. You can have more than 150 friends (2024)

FAQs

What is the Dunbar 150 theory? ›

'Dunbar's number' is the notion that there exists a cognitive limit on human groups of about 150 individuals. [1,2] This because '[t]o maintain group cohesion, individuals must be able to meet their own requirements, as well as coordinate their behaviour with other individuals in the group.

By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships. There is some evidence that brain structure predicts the number of friends one has, though causality remains to be seen.

An individual human can maintain stable social relationships with about 150 people, not more. This is the proposition known as 'Dunbar's number' - that the architecture of the human brain sets an upper limit on our social lives.

According to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the “magic number” is 150. Dunbar became convinced that there was a ratio between brain sizes and group sizes through his studies of non-human primates.

Dunbar's number is a popular estimate for the maximum size of social groups. But new research suggests that it's a fictitious number based on flimsy data and bad theory.

Dunbar suggested that a maximum group size of 150, which he found represented in natural-forming groups all over the world in different domains and cultures – from tribes to military units – is a function of neocortex size in the primate brain.

The Rule of 150, or Dunbar's Number is a suggestion that there is an upper limit to the number of connections humans can make before communication and relationships break down. As a company scales and grows it becomes increasingly tricky to maintain good communication and connections between people and teams.

According to Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University professor and author of the book, “Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships,” the portion of the human brain known as the neocortex can only handle a social circle of about 150 people at any given time — or even fewer.

Dunbar left room for nuance in his theory. He used a “rule of three” formula to describe how the closeness of our relationships can be viewed through multiples of three. Of the 150 people you have a relationship with, you might have a smaller circle of about 50 people who are close friends or family.

(For those unfamiliar, The Rule of 150 was coined by British Anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, and is defined as the “suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships and thus numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms ...

What is a Dunbar's number in business? ›

Dunbar's number is 150 – the ideal size of a group in which the members work well together.

The community level of organisation turned out to be almost exactly 150. Thus was born the “social brain hypothesis” and “Dunbar's number”, the former referring to the relationship between group size and brain size in primates and the latter referring to the natural group size of about 150 for humans.

Dunbar's Number (c. 150), is interpreted as the upper limit on the number of social relationships a human can effectively manage. This implies that teams of more than 150 will not effectively function without an imposed social structure (e.g. a hierarchy).

Also known as 'The Rule of 150', this has become the main takeaway for most. However, Dunbar actually discussed a range of 100 to 200 as an optimum number of meaningful relationships and put forward a series of nested numbers beyond that: 1 or 2 special friends. 5 close friends.

Dunbar argues that as humans began living in increasingly larger social groups, the task of manually grooming all one's friends and acquaintances became so time-consuming as to be unaffordable. In response to this problem, Dunbar argues that humans invented 'a cheap and ultra-efficient form of grooming'—vocal grooming.

An anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, Dunbar's fame largely focuses around a single number; 150. The theory of Dunbar's Number posits that 150 is the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships. The genesis of Dunbar's theory was a man by the name of Bill Gore.

Dunbar's Number is a theory proposed by anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who suggests that there is a cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. According to Dunbar, this number ranges between 100 and 250, with the average being around 150.

Dunbar focused on verbally cuing and creatively luring to achieve desirable behavior and using “life rewards”— sniffing, walking, play with dogs, and interactive games — to reinforce speedy compliance and good habits from the outset.