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How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks [Paperback]

Professor Robin Dunbar (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 3 Feb 2011

We are the product of our evolutionary history and this history colours our everyday lives - from why we kiss to how religious we are. In How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Robin Dunbar explains how the distant past underpins our current behaviour, through the groundbreaking experiments that have changed the thinking of evolutionary biologists forever.

He explains phenomena such as why 'Dunbar's Number' (150) is the maximum number of acquaintances you can have, why all babies are born premature and the science behind lonely hearts columns. Stimulating, provocative and highly enjoyable, this fascinating book is essential for understanding why humans behave as they do - what it is to be human.

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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber (3 Feb 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0571253431
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571253432
  • Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 2 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 159,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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› Visit Amazon's R. I. M. Dunbar Page
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Product Description

Book Description

Why should you suspect someone who has more than 150 friends on Facebook?

About the Author

Robin Dunbar is currently Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His principal research interest is the evolution of sociality. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998. His books include The Trouble with Science, 'an eloquent riposte to the anti-science lobby' (Sunday Times), and Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. The Human Story was described as 'fizzing with recent research and new theories' in the Sunday Times and 'punchy and provocative' by the New Scientist. How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks was published in 2010.
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Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
10 reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Answer is "150"--And, For a Change, Not "42" 7 Mar 2010
By William Holmes
Format:Hardcover
The Answer is "150"--And, for a Change, Not "42", March 7, 2010

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, offers a fascinating collection of essays about the evolution of humans and human society. The answer to the book's title, "How Many Friends Does One Person Need?", is somewhere around 150 (Dunbar's Number). From groups of hunter-gatherers to well-run corporations and armies, the number 150 is a basic (and maximum) building block for human organizations. Groups with fewer than 150 individuals can generally function on a first name basis--members can actually know, to one degree or another, everyone in the group. Groups larger than 150 tend to exceed the capacity of individual members to keep track of social complexity, which means that, like large corporate enterprises, they need heirarchy and management to preserve manageable group structures.

According to Dunbar, the complexity of human society--not tools, or walking upright, or hunting--it the primary force driving the growth of the human brain. Our brains enable us to speak and sing and otherwise communicate with each other without actually touching, so we can groom each other at a distance, so to speak. Because our social interactions don't require one-on-one contact, human groups can be larger than the groups of our primate cousins--but group size still has a limit, which appears to be about 150.

Dunbar's book is very readable and is filled with fascinating tidbits, like the fact that all human infants (even the ones who are carried to a full nine month term) are born premature. For our children to be born at the same level of development as, say, a chimpanzee, the gestation period would need to be about 22 months.... Read more ›
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Happy Reader 8 Aug 2011
By Fergus McClelland
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Dunbar makes the complex simple and illuminates with every sentence. This is not an academic treatise - and yet it is. Stuffed with fascinating detail about why we natter. I bought all of Dunbar's books on Amazon and they are all excellent.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars One - Hundred - and - Fifty 25 Nov 2012
By opus
Format:Paperback
It was my fascination with Facebook - a sociality which does not work and which as soon as the Marketeers realise that they are wasting their money in financing ads aimed at the converted and where the number of active users on Facebook is only a fraction of those claimed as members and will surely fail - that led to my fascination with the concept of Dunbar's Number. Yet it is clear that many people have Facebook friends of a far greater number than 150 and that they really do know these people. I recall my Headmaster (on joining the school) learning the (sur)names of all 450 of us boys so that he could address us properly - and of course he knew many other people. Over two thousand years ago Aristotle in chapters eight and nine of the Ethics observed that one could only have a small number of real friends - Dunbar has merely quantified that as five - and has gone on in multiples of three to recognise greater and less intimate acquaintances at 15, 50, 150 and upwards. I am not convinced. The size of a Soccer or Cricket team is intermediate between 5 and 15 at eleven, and the perfectly balanced Symphony Orchestra is midway between 50 and 150 at about 84 to 90.

The essays are generally most interesting but written at Readers Digest level - and as can be seen from the Net very differently from his academic papers. I have seen a video of the author giving a popular lecture and he comes over in that just as he does in this book; as a likable, slightly woolly individual. What I find most infuriating, is not his batting for Scotland (go independent for all I care!) but his seeming failure to join up the dots of his facts: He is a dreadful Mangina.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars We are the product of our evolutionary history 8 Jan 2011
By Simon Laub
Format:Hardcover
We are the the product of our evolutionary history, according to professor (of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University) Robin Dunbar. According to Dunbar, the evidence is everywhere: From the way we socially interact (Grooming, laughter, music and language), to the way our minds are actually build and onwards to the way our minds are capable of reflecting about the world. There is an evolutionary hand in it everywhere. The book is a delightful and fascinating read, sharing insights from many fields, but always with a focus on evolutionary biology.

Sections about grooming are especially good. Indeed, grooming is not just about removing fleas. It is about intimacy, it creates a sense of wellbeing and relaxed connectedness. It has to do with endorphins. Laughter, music and language are all forms of grooming, even though they might have other purposes as well. It is all about what makes us work as individuals and as groups.

Our big brains are necessary for these more advanced forms of grooming. And the grooming makes it possible to build even bigger brains. All in just in a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.

An exciting book about an exciting subject.

-Simon
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating read 24 April 2011
By Robert Ashton
Format:Paperback
Robin Dunbar is to anthropology what Brian Cox is to physics. He has an entertaining and thought provoking way of explaining why we are as we are. Read this book and reflect on the social malaise currently affecting the world and you can see that actually, it's obvious why we have so much unrest.

To test the book's appeal, I gave my copy to my 86yr old uncle, who rarely reads books these days. He loved it!
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