Using Dunbar's Number to change your world.

According to Robin Dunbar and his study on monkeys, our brains can only maintain strong social relationships with about 150 people (or “monkeysphere” or Dunbar’s Number). Everybody else is an abstract concept; it’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we can’t really handle more people than that.

Dunbar’s Number explains how many campaigns – from social justice to advertising – succeed or fail: they rely on tapping into the personality of your 150. We’d be more likely to do something about an issue like the war in Iraq if we knew someone who was there or was from Iraq, than if we hardly knew any Iraqis. We think “oh, this issue is close to someone I deeply care for; if it’s important to them it’s important to me too. I want them to be happy.”.

It becomes more than “What’s In It For Me?”; the question is now “What’s In It For Me and My 150?”

Pace Smith, half of The Usual Error, proposes a way to use Dunbar’s Number to make deep changes in the world: diversify your 150.

This is why I enjoy going into different circles and connecting people to each other. All the varied people in my 150 (or 1000+ if you believe my Facebook account) would be able to connect with each other, with me as a common link, and create great things of beauty. It’s awesome when I see it happen!

The nature of Dunbar’s Number means that as life progresses, those in our 150 come and go. Someone important to us in the past may just be at the periphery now. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace make it easier to keep track of everyone we’ve met, but even so we can only make the most fruitful connections with about 150 people at a time.

That doesn’t mean the other hundreds of people have to go away or ignore us. It could mean checking in every so often to see what they’re up to, and see how you can help. It can mean making introductions and letting them take it from there. It may mean finding out what your other 850 stand for, being educated, and seeing how you can support them too. It means learning from the people you’ve met, 150 or not, and using that to make change with the people you’re meeting and will meet.