9 October 2019. Emmanuel Lafont. According to Dunbar's theory, people can 'handle' up to about 150 relationships – whether in early hunter-gatherer societies or the modern workplace (Credit: Emmanuel Lafont) The theory of Dunbar's number holds that we can only really maintain about 150 connections at once.
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.
80/20 Principle: A New Approach to Relationships
For relationships, this rule means that 80% of our happiness comes from just 20% of our relationships. I maintained a few close relationships, being an introvert. However, I used to view having few friends as a shortcoming.
According to social psychologist Robin Dunbar, we are limited to how many friends we can manage at any given time. His studies show that our brains can handle about 150 friendships (known as Dunbar's number) due to limitations in attention span and time.
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.
According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones. That's followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognise).
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggests that the average person can only maintain about 150 primary, I-care-you-care relationships. The simple reason for this is that we reach certain cognitive limits, and because there is simply not enough time for more without diffusing the quality of all relationships.
(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 ...
While the Dunbar number gives us an idea of how many social relationships humans are capable of maintaining, it's also interesting to look at how many friends people actually have on average. According to a 2021 survey data, the average person in America has between 3 and 5 close friends.
Dunbar defines the “seven pillars of friendship” as similarities that predispose people to become friends: language or dialect, geography, educational experiences, hobbies and interests, moral or spiritual viewpoints, political views, sense of humour and taste in music.
Remember the 11–3–6 rule
It takes about eleven different three-hour-long encounters, over the course of six months or so, to turn an acquaintance into an actual friend.
The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one would want to be treated by them. It is sometimes called an ethics of reciprocity, meaning that you should reciprocate to others how you would like them to treat you (not necessarily how they actually treat you).
Midlife (Ages 30-50): Stability and Selective Social Circles
The average number of close friends during this period is around 3 to 5, with many people prioritizing a tight circle of trusted, long-term friends. This period is often focused on family and career, leaving less time to form new friendships.
What is the Monkeysphere? Referred to as “the monkeysphere” by David Wong in his Cracked.com article, “What is the monkeysphere?” it can be defined as the maximum number of social relationships an individual can maintain at any one time.
On the other hand, having a smaller social circle of close, supportive relationships can be much more beneficial for mental health. An American Perspectives Survey found Americans reported the following: 49% have three or fewer close friends. 36% have four to nine close friends.
From an EFL context, a false friend could be defined as an L2 word that is formally similar to an L1 word in spelling and/or pronunciation but whose meanings are totally or partially different in both languages. In this case, the students´ L1 or mother tongue is Spanish/Galician and the foreign language English.
90% of people age 50 and older reported that they have at least one close friend (48% have 1-3 close friends, 42% have 4 or more), while 10% do not have any close friends. About half of older adults with fair or poor mental health (47%) said they do not have enough close friends.
The Bible warns us to choose our friends wisely; Proverbs 12:26 says, “The righteous should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray.” When choosing a friend, especially a best friend, we should make sure he or she is a growing Christian.
This premise has been explored in the aged population and people living alone. Older Americans with a network of a large number of friends were more likely to be happy than their peers with a restricted social network [22].
Happiness and Number of Friends
According to CNBC, people tend to need around 10 close friendships to lead a happy life. However, the same source suggests that having too many friends could actually be associated with lower well-being, indicating that a moderate number of close friendships is ideal for happiness.
Rule 150 - Assistance by police. The proper officer may seek such assistance from the officer- in-charge of the jurisdictional police station as may be necessary in the discharge of his duties and the said officer-in-charge shall depute sufficient number of police officers for providing such assistance.
The rule of 150
In monkeys and apes, there is correlation between primate brain size and the size of their social groups, and by extrapolating this relationship we would expect humans to have a natural upper limit to the number of people in their group to about 150.
Summary: 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.
The big bang is how astronomers explain the way the universe began. It is the idea that the universe began as just a single point, then expanded and stretched to grow as large as it is right now—and it is still stretching!
What has come to be known as Dunbar's number contends that humans are only cognitively able to maintain about 150 connections at once (subsequent research has put the number higher). That includes an inner circle of about five close friends, followed by larger concentric circles of more casual types of friends.