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Recent Questions
- Why did everyone start to hate the Russians if the U.S. did the same thing in Afghanistan, Iraq?
- What needs to be corrected in the management of Russia first?
- Why did Blaise Pascal become a religious man at the end of his life?
- How do I know if a guy likes you?
- When they say "one generation", how many do they mean?
There is a very scientific answer to this question.
English scientist Robin Dunbar, studying grooming in monkeys (Monkeys get ticks and other insects out of each other's fur, as this is difficult to do without someone else's help. This is the basis of social relationships between individuals) revealed that the number of social connections that a monkey can maintain at the same time is limited due to the limited capabilities of the brain. In monkeys, the maximum number of connections is approximately 40. This is why flocks of monkeys on average number from 35 to 45 individuals.
Having found out this, Dunbar began to project the acquired knowledge on the person. After conducting a series of experiments, he found that a person has a maximum number of active social connections (=acquaintances) ranging from 130 to 200. The number of maximum possible acquaintances was called the Dunbar number and on average is considered equal to 150.
But that's not all. These 150 acquaintances are people who we can immediately name, describe their appearance and character. But you can also calculate closer circles of acquaintances. Interestingly, each subsequent narrow circle is about three times smaller than the previous one. Of course, these figures vary slightly for each person, but the approximate number can be determined. So:
150 people – people about whom you can easily tell the name, appearance and character, describe what the person is interested in and what ideas they share (you don't need to know this deeply)
50 people – “people you will invite to the wedding” – a circle of people with whom you are in frequent contact at this stage of life and see them regularly
15-20 people – friends with whom you can go to the movies, talk about something and just spend time with pleasure
5 people – “best friends”. People you think about almost constantly, even when they're not around. It is no coincidence that the category of “important friends” in cozy kontaktik consists of five people.
But after all, a person constantly meets new people, how can the number of his acquaintances be constant? It's just that new people come into our lives and push out old acquaintances. Hardly anyone in adult life remembers their friends from kindergarten. �And this substitution doesn't just apply to the total number 150. When someone new enters a narrow group of close acquaintances, they displace the one who was there before. So, choose your new friends carefully.
You need to understand the concepts. Who we call acquaintances, if we go from direct, then you can call any person who introduced himself to you and to whom you were introduced. Well, now you can estimate the standard scheme: first, these are parents, relatives, distant relatives, friends of parents, a kindergarten and your group of 20 people, a neighboring group of peers from the same number of children. Parents of children from your group, maybe even a couple of parents from neighboring groups. And, of course, tutors, nannies of the provost and all other employees of the kindergarten. Spend weekends at home, but not all the time you spend in the apartment, you are taken out for a walk on the playground, where children and their parents are again, in the average yard there are also dog lovers, whom children almost never miss. We add it in. And we also get sick in childhood, and even if we are not sick enough, we are vaccinated, one way or another a trip to the polyclinic for children is provided. And there are doctors, laboratory assistants, nurses and, of course, new children and their parents again. After that, the person goes to school. The school has new children, new teachers, new parents. And there are many more of them than in kindergarten. A few hundred exactly, but generally more. Well, and so on the knurled. Another half a thousand at the university. Then work, in some organization where you personally know about fifty employees. Well, again, polyclinics and other public institutions. And in the modern world, most people also have online dating and hobbies, which involve social contacts with a dozen other people, or even more. As a result, several thousand acquaintances are recruited.
There is another option, in which we call acquaintances people with whom we communicate quite regularly, but who are not considered close, there may be from ten to a couple of hundred of them.