क्या है डनबर नंबर

ऑक्सफ़ोर्ड यूनिवर्सिटी के प्रोफेसर रॉबिन डनबर ने सोशल नेटवर्किंग साइट पर बेस्ड स्टडी में दावा किया है कि इंसान सोशल मीडिया पर कितने भी दोस्तों से जुड़ जाएं, लेकिन वह सिर्फ 150 लोगों से दोस्ती मैनेज कर सकता है और उतने ही दोस्तों को याद रख सकता है। 

हमारे पास एक सीमित मात्रा सामाजिक पूंजी में है और हम बड़ी बारीकी से ज्यादा लोगों पर कम या कम लोगों पर ज्‍यादा निवेश करत सकते हैं, लेकिन हम इसका दायरा बढ़ा नहीं सकते हैं। डनबर के मुताबिक मानवीय रिश्तें परत वाले वक्र हैं, जो सबसे करीब से दूर की तरह व्यवथित हैं।

हमारे औसतन पांच घनिष्ठ मित्र, 15 सबसे अच्छे दोस्त, 50 अच्छे दोस्त, 150 दोस्तों, 500 परिचितों और 1500 लोगों पहचान भर होते हैं।

150 लोग सबसे महत्वपूर्ण हैं ये वे लोग होते हैं जिनके साथ आप वास्तव में ‌रिश्तों को जिंदा रखना चाहते हैं।  लोग फेसबुक पर 500 या 1,000 दोस्त हो सकता हैं, लेकिन वे सब परिचत भर हो सकते हैं।

ऐसा इसलिए क्योंकि हमारा दिमाग एक निश्चित संख्या 100-200 ही लोगों की दोस्ती को संभाल सकता है। इसे सोशल ब्रेन हाइपोथिसिस के नाम से जाना जाता है। इस आकार की दोस्ती को बनाए रखने के लिए पर्याप्त समय की जरूरत होती है। उन्होंने यह निष्कर्ष 3 हजार लोगों पर किए गए सर्वे के आधार पर निकाला है।

edited dunbar

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. 

1. This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size.

By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed 

1. that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships. (100 to 250 and commonly 150) Dunbar explained it informally as "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar".On the periphery, the number also includes past colleagues, such as high school friends, with whom a person would want to reacquaint himself or herself if they met again.

In a piece for the Financial Times (10 Aug 2018), titled 'Why drink is the secret to humanity’s success' Dunbar mentioned two more numbers: an inner core of about 5 people to whom we devote about 40 percent of our available social time and 10 more people to whom we devote another 20 percent. All in all, we devote about two-thirds of our time to just 15 people. 

Anthropologist H. Russell Bernard, Peter Killworth and associates have done a variety of field studies in the United Stestimated mean number of ties, 290, which is roughly double Dunbar's estimate. The Bernard–Killworth median of 231 is lower, due to an upward skew in the distribution, but still appreciably larger than Dunbar's estimate. The

Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group.  

Popularisation

Malcolm Gladwell discusses the Dunbar number in his popular 2000 book The Tipping Point. Gladwell describes the company W. L. Gore and Associates, now known for the Gore-Tex brand. By trial and error, the leadership in the company discovered that if more than 150 employees were working together in one building, different social problems could occur. The company started building company buildings with a limit of 150 employees and only 150 parking spaces. When the parking spaces were filled, the company would build another 150-employee building. Sometimes these buildings would be placed only short distances apart. The company is also known for the open allocation company structure.

The number has been used in the study of virtual communities, especially MMORPGs, such as Ultima Online, and social networking websites, such as Facebook[25] (Dunbar himself did a study on Facebook in 2010 and MySpace.

The Swedish tax authority planned to reorganise its functions in 2007 with a maximum 150 employees per office, referring to Dunbar's research.

In 2007, Cracked.com editor David Wong wrote a humour piece titled "What is the Monkeysphere?" explaining Dunbar's number.

In the 2012 novel This Book Is Full of Spiders, also by David Wong, the character Marconi explains to David the impact Dunbar's number has on human society. In Marconi's explanation, the limit Dunbar's number imposes on the individual explains phenomena such as racism and xenophobia, as well as apathy towards the suffering of peoples outside of an individual's community.

In episode 103 of the podcast Hello Internet (31 May 2018) Brady Haran and Grey discuss the reasons the number may be limited to 150 including the ability to keep track of political relationships in large groups of people and the amount of time that people have to devote towards developing and maintaining friendships.