Social networks: Dunbar's 5-15-50-150 model (support clique/closest relationships) | Good Medicine

In this fourth section of the book chapter on 'Social networks', I introduce one of the best models for understanding personal social networks which emerges from the deeply intriguing work of Robin Dunbar, Oxford professor of evolutionary psychology. He has written a number of popular books including "Human evolution: our brains & behaviour", "The science of love and betrayal" and "How many friends does one person need?: Dunbar's number and other evolutionary quirks". Dunbar's website links to over 260 of his academic publications. The two slides below (and two in the next section) provide an introduction to some of his ideas including the well argued thesis that our personal social networks can helpfully be seen as made up of a number of layers (with ourself at the centre), each larger layer increasing in number of constituent members by a factor of about three when compared to the layer inside it. The innermost layer is often rather awkwardly labelled the "support clique" and it r

In this fourth section of the book chapter on 'Social networks', I introduce one of the best models for understanding personal social networks which emerges from the deeply intriguing work of Robin Dunbar, Oxford professor of evolutionary psychology. He has written a number of popular books including "Human evolution: our brains & behaviour", "The science of love and betrayal" and "How many friends does one person need?: Dunbar's number and other evolutionary quirks". Dunbar's website links to over 260 of his academic publications. The two slides below (and two in the next section) provide an