How many people do you
have in your social network – not social media network, but your social network
with real people? This includes acquaintances that you have personal exchanges
with. What is the average number of acquaintances for each person?
The Psychological Association takes a look at the
research documented in FiveThirtyEight (September 23, 2015) – on how many
acquaintances, on average, a person actually has in their social network.
Research on acquaintances
commenced in the 1950s in a study on ‘acquaintance volume.’ Two sociologists,
Ithiel de Sola Pool and Manfred Kochen, pioneered the research on estimating
the number of individuals people have in their social network. Pool carried a
notebook for 100 days and recorded every exchange with another person (in
person, over the telephone, and by mail). Each person was noted once even if he
interacted many times with the same person. Therefore as the days passed, the
number of new names added each day declined. Pool then predicted what would
happen over 20 years – and estimated that he would have recorded about 3,500
acquaintances (that’s on average 175 people per year).
In 1960, an MIT
student conducted an experiment that looked at 86 days of President Franklin
Roosevelt’s appointment diary and estimated that he would have about 22,500
acquaintances in 20 years (that’s on average 1,125 people per year).
In 1961, Michael
Gurevich repeated the Pool and Kochen experiment, again with a notebook
recording personal exchanges. Instead of just himself, he enlisted the help of
27 participants. Gurevich averaged the results and got 2,130 in a 20-year
period (that’s on average 107 people per year).
In the 1990s Robin
Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology, initially studied apes and the
size of their social group. Using a formula based on brain size, he chose the
Macaca sinica monkeys and the Cacajao monkeys (their brain size is similar to
the size of a human brain). The Macacas had a social group of around 17 whereas
the Cacajao had a social group of around four monkey friends. His prediction
for people was between 100 and 231 friends – with an average of 150.
Dunbar tested his
theory by studying tribes: one between 30-50 people and the other between
500-2,500 people. Therefore clans within the tribes were estimated to be around
100-200 people. He defined clans as those that ‘interact on a sufficiently
regular basis to have strong bonds based on direct personal knowledge.’ Dunbar
also looked at military groupings and found that the average size was 179.7
(around 180). In 2002 he conducted an experiment on the average number of
Christmas cards people sent to people they know or were acquainted with – and
the average was 153.5 (around 150).
Hence Dunbar maintains
that people, on average, have 150 acquaintances. He inferred that ‘there is a
cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can
maintain a stable relationship with.’ That is, around 150 people whose names
and faces a person can remember without prompts.
Given each of these
research studies, excluding the President Roosevelt study and the ape study,
the results are quite similar – between 107-175 – on average 141. The 150 statistic
is the average ballpark figure that most mathematicians use.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/how-many-people-can-you-remember.html
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-people-can-you-remember/
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