Anthropologist Robin Dunbar presents an interesting framework to explain social connections and their role in our lives. He proposed the 150-connection rule (also known as Dunbar number) suggesting that we humans can maintain a maximum of 150 stable social relationships with others at a time. Dunbar made this claim based on the size of human brain and its cognitive limit. The 150 connections include close ties, as well as extended family and friends. Dunbar suggests that the number holds true for the modern online communities as much as it did for our hunter gatherer societies. Though Dunbar himself later spoke of how the 150 connection rule is not one of his best pieces of research. Yet it caught public imagination.
Dunbar breaks down the 150 connections into circles of concentric relationships. The circles are based on the proximity to the connections, trust and depth of the bond. Apart from our relationship with our own self, we maintain 3-5 core relationships that we frequently connect with, regularly, confide in and seek solace from. These relationships flourish when both sides invest effort and time to nurture them. If we lose connection with them, they gradually move from the inner core to the periphery. The circle of relationships also includes people we call our close friends. Close enough to be trusted with care of our kids, but not close enough for sharing deep feelings. We maintain 15 such relationships at a time, adding and removing people as time goes by.
In addition, we have up to 50 good friends in our lives and these are the people we happily invite to our weekend parties and small family events. Next 150 people in our circle are just friends, who get invited to weddings, funerals and once in a lifetime kind of events. Everything changes if we are focused on peripheral relationships with many and lose sight of connecting deeply with ourselves and our closest few people (often family or friends as good as family.
Our social connections have three properties, which, when combined with Dunbar’s 150 connection rule; help explains the key drivers of loneliness. Firstly, connections have structure i.e. the number of connection and how diverse they are. We are more likely to feel lonely when the structure of our connections is weak. We have connections and we do not have diversity. Secondly, our connections have functionality i.e. do we perceive our connections to be readily available to support us? As an example, having or not having a 3 AM friend. Loneliness is a position of distress and helplessness. Not having people to fall back upon is problematic. Thirdly, our social connections can be of high or low quality i.e. how deep do they run? How positive are they? Are these loving, nurturing, supportive or conflictual judgemental and violent? At times our close social connections are ambivalent blowing hot and cold alternately. Poor quality connections contribute to the feelings of helpless and distress us. The most intimidating situation is absence of a strong positive relationship with ourselves. In which case the voice in our head turns negative, resulting in frequent negative self-dialogue and self-damaging behaviours. Therefore, there is a possibility that people feel lonely in a crowd, because they don’t feel connected. We thrive when we have positive relationships with our own selves and with our significant others. Connecting and collaborating with others has been a crucial survival approach since the times of the hunter gatherer society.
In the digital age where multiplying numbers is easy, we infer from Dunber’s framework that the number of meaningful and stable connections one can have at a time still continues to be 150. Quick reflection on our own circles and how they are moving might just add perspective on what needs to change. Inviting observations on what it takes to cultivate 3 AM friendships/familial ties? As a word of caution, the earlier cited report of JB.com already leaves us clueless about why people (young adults in particular) in strongly structured and large families continue to feel lonely.
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