#48:
Friends, Tribes, & Social Cohesion
with
Robin Dunbar
Episode Summary
The much admired Robin Dunbar joins Jef Szi and the How Humans Work Podcast for the second of a two part conversation about limits and leaps of social patterns in humans.
In this episode Professor Dunbar continues his wide-ranging account of the primate rooted factors driving human relationships and human societies. While the first part is focused on social grooming and the role of the endorphin system in bonding, part two expands those ideas into a series of views on our social nature.
Beginning with looking at time investment of the inner core of our intimate friends, Robin shows us the gradations of friendships and the kinds of acts and expectations that correlate with them. His main focus is on understanding the importance our core five friends have in our lives.
He also articulates how humans have scaled the social group size from ancient group size patters of fifty to what is now known as “Dunbar’s Number” of 150 and its connection to the Social Brain Hypothesis. The core insight here is that brain size is tied to the amount of computation and skills of diplomacy needed to manage our group size.
From here, Dunbar takes us through a series of examples: courtship, language, and religion and the way humans have exploited existing biological circuits to break through glass ceilings of being cohesive with ever larger groups. Laughter, feasting, ritual, storytelling and other cultural practices help humans find ways around limitation by forging diffuse and weak social supergroups. Ultimately, Dunbar offers us a concentric view of our social reality, explaining the patterns, the leaps and limits, and the tensions of our social nature.
This conversation is one that helps us see who we are in our social story, doing a great deal to make sense of our population journey and how we can use bottom-up (raw feels) and top-down (cognitive knowledge) to build a viable way into a very uncertain future.
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About: Robin Dunbar: Robin Dunbar is Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University. His work in the Experimental Psychology department at the Magdalen College is concerned with ‘trying to understand the behavioral, cognitive and neuroendocrinological mechanisms that underpin social bonding in primates (in general) and humans (in particular).’ Robin is the author of several books, including The Social Brain, Human Evolution, and Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships. Professor Dunbar is known for advancing the Social Brain Hypothesis with Dunbar’s Number.
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Episode #48 Takeaways
Dunbar's number suggests humans can maintain 150 relationships.
Time investment is key to strong friendships.
Friendships provide emotional support during crises.
Social interactions can be as beneficial as medical interventions.
Volunteering can substitute for friendships in terms of social exposure.
Cohesion in larger groups requires superficial cues and shared knowledge. Friendship layers are assessed within the first four weeks.
Common interests determine the depth of friendships.
Intuition plays a key role in evaluating relationships.
Institutions help manage social cohesion and relationships.
Shared knowledge and folklore create larger communities.
Religion serves as a stabilizing force in communities.
Top-down structures provide discipline, while bottom-up structures foster local identity.
Population density poses significant future challenges.
Humans have historically found solutions to problems.
Optimism is essential for navigating future uncertainties.
