Dunbar's Number: Why We Can't Have More Than 150 Friends

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/02/18/Robin_Dunbar_How_Many_Friends_Does_One_Person_Need

Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar expands on "Dunbar's number," his theory that the maximum number of stable relationships a person can maintain is approximately 150. Time to delete a few hundred Facebook friends?

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We are the product of our evolutionary history, and that history colors our experience of everyday life -- from the number of friends we have to how religious we are. Renowned evolutionary anthropologist Professor Robin Dunbar visits the RSA to explain how the very distant past underpins all of our current behaviors, and how we can best utilize that knowledge.

Did you know that you have just 150 friends, acquaintances and relatives? And that this is a natural size for villages all over the world? Now known as "Dunbar's Number," it defines the feasible boundaries of our social lives. Dunbar's investigations show us that we inherited the social side of our brains from our mother, and the emotional side from our father; why many women see the world in four or even five different colors, but men only ever have the conventional red, green and blue; and why facial symmetry has everything to do with voter choices in elections. - RSA

Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar is a British anthropologist and evolutionary biologist, specializing in primate behavior. He is best known for formulating Dunbar's number, roughly 150, a measurement of the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships".

Professor Dunbar is a director of the British Academy Centenary Research Project (BACRP) "From Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain" and is involved in the planned BACRP "Identifying the Universal Religious Repertoire".

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[Gunriffun9mm]

I have zero friends because I am god.

[1RadicalOne]

The description reads "did you know you have just 150 friends?"

I do not even have a third that... :(

[w0nderwhatsnext]

@Suto50 Just because you know who they are doesn't mean that you are friends with them! I know you don't talk to all of them on a regular basis!

[therealdivine]

I met at least 1,000 friends on Craigslist, this guys a buffoon.

[SomethingSea1]

Women hold more people, likely. There is an evolutionary advantage to that.

[Manjo1981]

@Gunriffun9mm haha...true, with 6 billion children ( including 3 billion humans) , you dont get time to make friends i guess

[fringeelements]

I can't believe Robin Dunbar can't see the implications of his own research on the viability of socialism.

[deathtotheism]

The clip doesn't really match the title. Also how do you define friend? Someone could have thousands of friends if their idea of friendship permitted it.

[suto50]

I have 1,386 Facebook friends currently, and I know who all of them are.

[eenayeah]

@jldkrank

How are you sure about that? Can't be REAL personal.

[jldkrank]

I have 700+ friends on FaceBook, and I know about 320 of them personally very well.