I’ll Be on NPR Saturday, Looking After My Dunbar Number

I’ll be on NPR’s All Things Considered this Saturday afternon as part of a short segment about “Dunbar’s number,” the vital network of 150-or-so social relations that evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar says we must each maintain to live successfully. (We do it mainly by talking, especially gossip; monkeys do it mainly by grooming.) I’ve written […]

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Local & Distant Friendships – A Dunbar Number Conundrum

Long ago, when we lived in small villages, your friends’ friends were generally your friends, and vice-versa, with almost complete overlap, because you likely knew the same people — the small number of people who lived in your village. Chances were that number was 150, because 150, as evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar has argued in a social-brain […]

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