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September 21, 2012
Q. If you start with YOU as a single person, or a one, then raise this number to five people, 15, 50, 150, 500 and 1,500, what's happening here communally?
A. These are the groupings in a typical person's life, beginning with five intimates, 15 best friends, 50 good friends, 150 friends, 500 acquaintances and finally 1,500 people that he or she can recognize, says evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar in New Scientist magazine. We humans are a bonded species, living amid family and friends in social networks that have dramatic effects on our lives, influencing how we eat, what we wear, even how we laugh. Based on the group size of other social primates and on human brain size, we could expect our own group to swell to about 150, or about the limit “where we can still have a real relationship involving trust and obligation.”
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