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Dunbar's number is that ON AVERAGE people can only maintain 150 relationships. "maintaining relationship" is not the same as remembering or knowing the person'

Dunbar's number is that ON AVERAGE people can only maintain 150 relationships. "maintaining relationship" is not the same as remembering or knowing the person's name. It is spending enough time with the person that you have an ongoing relationship, which is eased if you remember a number of details about them (job history, hobbies, birthdays, etc). On average matters because the number is about group size, not any one individual's ability. For the group to cohere, most of the people in the group need to know most of the people in the group. You will find people who can only manage 100 or fewer relationships, likewise, people who can maintain many more, even orders of magnitude more. It isn't about the individual. It is about the group.

bombcar 4y ago
Another way to put it is that for a group of 100-150 or so, you'll be able know everyone decently well. A small college graduating class, or a tiny high school perhaps. At about 300 or so, you'll "recognize" most of the group, but you won't know much about many of them, or really have a relationship. And once the group is above that, you either need to have it hierarchical setup (you don't know all the members of the families at your school, but you recognize the parents, etc) or it just becomes a mash of smaller groups (no matter how you try to pretend it isn't).