Talk:Dunbar's number

150

RE: "...he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships".
Fascinating. For years I've cited a memorable Economist magazine article about Facebook, where the journalist cited the Dunbar Number theory BUT ALSO stated that, according to the Dunabr Number theory, the number of people that you actually, really know (i.e. have a meaningful and complex relationship with) is in the teens figures (with Females having a slightly higher quota than Males). Seeing the figure of "150" here blows me away. Is this actually correct? (No link for Economist article: it's now Pay-walled) -- 14:21, 20 March 2020 1.152.106.33

old talk

"Dunbar has theorized that 150 would be the mean group size only for communities with a very high incentive to remain together. For a group of this size to remain cohesive, Dunbar speculated that as much as 42% of the group's time would have to be devoted to social grooming."

The quote from the article which I've copied above is wrong if my interpretation of Dunbar's article "Neocortex Size, Group Size, and the Evolution of Language" is right. I believe it would be more accurate to say:

"Dunbar has theorized that 150 would be the mean group size only for communities with a very high incentive to remain together. For a group of this size to remain cohesive, Dunbar speculated that without developed verbal communication as much as 42% of the group's time would have to be devoted to social grooming."

It seems to me as though Dunbar uses the percent predicted grooming time as an argument for the reasons language evolved and when it evolved. If anyone else could check the article and confirm/deny this, please do. --Finog

---

I think this page needs to be deleted or renamed. It is clear that the word "monkeysphere" is not a technical term at all, and was in fact coined by David Wong for an internet humor article. Read this for details: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm#Monkeysphere I'd do it myself but I'm tired.-gunbladezero

I disagree. The monkeysphere, while primarily humorous, explains not only Dunbar's number but also some of the potential consequences of it (that is, why some people can be jerks, or why people can wholeheartedly "stick it to the man" or corporation or whatever. At the very least, it deserves a paragraph or two inside the article, if not its own article. I wouldn't want to spend the time re-reading and summarizing Monkeysphere only to have it deleted, however.--Mylon (talk) 17:44, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Should the term monkeysphere appear on the article itself as an unofficial term for Dunbar's Number? There's already a redirect from monkeysphere. I'm basing this on at least one additional humor article (this one on Cracked's website) discussing the "monkeysphere" rather then Dunbar's Number. (StarkeRealm (talk) 20:31, 11 February 2008 (UTC))

Beat me to this by three days. Good work. Heh. --Kizor 07:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

thanx! I thought I was feeling something breathing down my neck .... :)

--Rck 13:49, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

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does anyone know who first coined the term? I could not find anything on Google. --Rck 20:36, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I've been linked to this before, but that's the best I can do. The Monkeysphere is an intriguing construct from the available data, and I talk like this in real life too, though it raises a number of objections both due to unraised questions and my outdated religious beliefs. --Kizor 15:33, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the one I cited as the "Humorous Introduction"; it's rather funny. Ok, so we dont know yet who came up with this, alright. I can live with that for the moment.

--Rck 03:32, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

The first Googled USENET use of the term is in July 2004, and it links to the humorous article. --Kizor 03:59, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Use in linguistics research

Hi there, I am currently studying Linguistics, and the number 150 turns up in research in this field also. It has been suggested as the maximum number of useful interviewees in a given study; more than this and work is increased with quickly diminishing returns. And so, since (socio)linguistics research is fundamentally sociological in nature, I'm wondering if this might be relevant to the concepts brought up in this article. Genedecanter 23:02, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Academics?

"200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline's sub-specialization"

Is this something that Dunbar actually pointed out or is it something someone's added to supplement the list? The reason I'm asking is it's out of character when compared to the rest of the examples and it doesn't quite make sense. Not only is the number significantly larger than 150, but I don't think that academics in a particular sub-specialization are required to not only know everyone else in the sub-specialization personally but maintain a close relationship with them. A sub-specialization does not equal a village. If Dunbar made this point, that's fine, but it would be nice if this was sourced. Jordansc 14:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Well: a) I don't know and b) it would seem to refer to history. So maybe the specializations were knit closer in ye oldetimes. 81.197.34.227 (talk) 22:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Roman Armies?

"150 as the basic unit size of professional armies in Roman antiquity"

Where does this come from? I can't find confirmation for this. The centuria was the basic unit in roman armies an was composed of 60-80 men. While the first centuria had double, it was an exception, as seen on the centuria wikipedia page. I feel compelled to change but am going to leave this note to see if anyone corrects me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Omegaile (talk • contribs) 16:20, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Critique?

The page is quite credulous.

Presumably this is an easy theory to test, so where's the data? For some large sample of groups plot their size and see if there is a kink in the data near the number. We have this data and for source forge groups, for mailing lists, for firm size there is no kink.

Contrary to the article Gladwell's Tipping point principle arguement is that social networks, and their phase transitions, are scale free. He mentions Dunbar only six times.

Finally, aren't cranium size arguments a bit embarrassing these days; they certainly haven't held up in any other domain. Bhyde (talk) 13:58, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

2018

This paper might offer some numerical evidence towards Dunbar's number and against social networks being scale free, taken from Twitter (did not have time to carefully evaluate): https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0022656 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goldragon979 (talk • contribs) 08:04, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

"stable social relationship"

What is a stable social relationship? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.207.51 (talk) 06:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

A relationship between two people who encounter each other somewhat frequently, and whose relative roles remain somewhat fixed, I would assume... AnonMoos (talk) 12:53, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge

Oppose: Merge is not necessary here! --Tito Dutta ^Message 03:54, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge with what? --2.245.119.0 (talk) 10:28, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Cognitive limit?

I think this term is misleading. As I understand it, it's not that brains are physically incapable of remembering details of more than that (if so, it would vary widely from person to person); it's based on the way our society is structured such that we only have so much time and only see people so often. Tezero (talk) 17:37, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Sources

Please not that under 7: "External Links" the links to:

• "Mospos blog entry – Communities of practice and Dunbar's number" http://www.blog.mopsos.com/archives/000075.html
• "'The ultimate brain teaser' – an article on Dunbar's research at University of Liverpool Research Intelligence" http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue17/brainteaser.html

are no longer functioning/valid.

Recent addition

Somebody added the following to the Popularization section:

"Oct 8, 2013 referenced in 'This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It'

David Wong's sequel to 'John Dies at the End'

Used as an explanation as to why people start grouping people that are outside of their Dunbar Number into groups such as black and white, Christian & Muslim etc. in the case of this book it's infected vs clean. It is according to the book the reason you care more about your girlfriend cutting her finger than about hundreds killed in an earthquake halfway around the world."

I concluded that this was more along the lines of an incidental mention, aside from being poorly formatted and awkwardly written. You might say that it reflects the popularization of the term more than being a driver of popularization. Since there are innumerable examples of the former, I feel this one probably doesn't merit specific mention in the article. --Michael Snow (talk) 03:14, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Criticism confusion

"Brains much smaller than human or even mammalian brains are also known to be able to support social relationships, including ... computer-simulated virtual autonomous agents with simple reaction programming emulating what is referred to in primatology as "ape politics".[20]" I'm really confused. What does a computer simulation have to do with critiquing Dunbar's number? The paper wasp I understand, although it's oblique, and Dunbar specifically was looking at primates. But computer simulations could be set up to emulate anything.W0lfie (talk) 14:06, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

What a computer simulation can emulate is constrained by the parameters of the specific computer simulation. The fact that the computer simulation in question was set up to use only simple reactions and no complex cognition means that it could only do things that are possible for simple reactions without complex cognition. What other computer simulations can be set up to do is not relevant. It was also not the computer simulation itself that assessed its own similarity to ape social interaction, it was the standards used by primatologists to assess "social cognition" that were applied to the observation of the simulated "apes" and found the mainstream criteria met to the same evidence standards as for real chimpanzees. It is therefore relevant as an example of mainstream primatological criteria making false detections of complex thoughts behind social interaction, in this case in a system known with absolute certitude to lack complex cognition. This makes it relevant to debunk the idea of brain capacity having anything to do with social relationships which is what Dunbar's number is theoretically hinged on. The paper wasp example shows that it is possible to achieve the behavior supposed to require large brains with small brains, and convergent evolution is known to select for similar solutions in species that are not closely related. There is no reason to think that primates would magically need higher brain system requirements for the same behaviors than other animals, instead sociality would select for optimized nutrient cost reduction (a selection unparallelled in solitary or very small group social animals for which evolution can permit non-optimal costs of nutrients) due to needs for nutrients being disfavorable to social interaction by means of food scarcity, especially in the case of requirements for a wide range of essential nutrients which would cause specific types of needed food to be very scarce for large social groups. This is also relevant as evidence against the claim that brain capacity has anything to do with social relationships and as such against the idea of Dunbar's number.2.71.118.43 (talk) 21:18, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Lieberman's Criticsm

"Lieberman does not seem to discuss group size at all in The Unpredictable Species. What is the real source for this statement?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by AttilaWiki (talk • contribs) 06:20, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

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2019

Dunbar was on BBC radio this morning, he clearly stated that 150 was an average figure, definitely not an upper limit. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006zt6 (sorry, my login doesn't seem to work). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.97.176.185 (talk) 22:31, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Suggested addition after the first paragraph, since Dunbar's number has been debunked (however, self-cite)

A replication of Dunbar's analysis with a larger data set and updated comparative statistical methods has challenged Dunbar's number by revealing that the 95% confidence interval around the estimate of maximum human group size is much too large (4–520 and 2–336, respectively) to specify any cognitive limit. Robin Dunbar responded to these results by stating that "the study used flawed statistical methods and fails to account for the body of evidence we now have to support Dunbar’s number." The authors of the replication study have disputed this claim, but also pointed out that a replication taking Dunbar's suggestion into account also result in too large 95% confidence intervals (226–372) for any meaningful conclusion. From this, they point out that a cognitive limit on human group size cannot be derived via a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. PzychoPat (talk) 15:49, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Village size inclusive of children?

The article currently states that Dunbar had surveyed village sizes and found: "…150 as the estimated size of a Neolithic farming village; 150 as the splitting point of Hutterite settlements…."

Is this 150 reflective of the entire village population, or only the adults?

It seems like a relevant distinction to make in the article, as the other examples are clearly about adult-only populations: "…200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline's sub-specialisation; 150 as the basic unit size of professional armies…." — Epastore (talk) 21:27, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Conflicting source [15]

"Participants of the European career-oriented online social network XING who have about 157 contacts reported the highest level of job offer success, which also supports Dunbar's number of about 150.[15]" While [15] does in fact say "A level of about 150 contacts is most effective in terms of getting job offers, which confirms Dunbar’s number." this still conflicts with Dunbars number as explained in the rest of this article. See e.g.: "Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.[1][2]". => 150 people would need to include ALL real life contacts, ALL contacts on XING, ergo ALL contacts on Linkedin, ALL contacts on Facebook, ALL phone contacts. While there will be some overlap the total will exceed 150 by a significant number. Ergo exactly this would NOT confirm Dunbars number BUT suggest a higher number or some other modification mechanism or some other reason. Without good reasoning and explanation this is not secured knowledge. 80.146.191.212 (talk) 14:50, 27 February 2024 (UTC)