The perfect number of friends to maintain a social network
Each of us has a limit in terms of how many people we can keep up with in our social network. Thanks to a study from the University of Sydney it’s been determined that 132 is the maximum number of people that you can be connected to.
This doesn’t mean that you have to have 132 close friends – far from it. In fact for the majority of us, the research shows that the network can be managed by having just four or five or more close ties.
Essentially each of us has a limit in brain capacity, which is why we tend to focus on a smaller number of close friends. We literally don’t have the space to keep track of vast numbers of relationships. The lead author of the study, Dr Michael Harré, states, "When you have got this network of relationships, there are a lot of things going on in that network. It takes a lot of brain power to actually socially navigate these large networks and there's an upper limit to our ability to do that."
Dr Harré and his colleague Professor Mikhail Prokopenko have worked out how that specific limit is reached. Known as Dunbar's Number, it shows that there are a minimum number of relationships that each person needs to manage in order for the larger cooperative groups to form and function as a unit.
"To connect together a group of 132 individuals we estimate the average number of links each individual has to be able to maintain is between four and five," they said.
The model found that within each group, smaller groups of around five, 15 and 45 people form. This could be, for instance, a group of neighbours, a book club group, a volunteer group in the area, and even a group of colleagues. Someone in a group of five needs only to maintain one or two strong links within the group to keep it cohesive; someone in a group of 15 needs two or three links; and within a group of 45 they need three or four links.
This goes back to hunter-gatherer times when individuals found that they needed a larger group to work together in order to hunt prey and manage resources. But a person in the group needed only know a couple of others in order to make it work.
Dr Harré explains, "They had these free-forming groups which kept the power away from individuals and retained the power with the group.
All you need to do is like two or three people in that group and that's adequate for you to go off and hunt with them," he said.
In modern day, this works best if you at least understand how everyone in the group is related to each other. Being able to join new networks opens up your chances of connecting with some great people that you could potentially form life-long friendships with.
Have you put yourself out there and joined a new friendship network? We would love to hear your story in the comments.
Related links:
6 important reasons why we need good friends
9 tips to help you feel connected to others