Over the years, I have repeatedly come into contact with “Dunbar’s Number”. I have read articles and such, and yet right now I am offline and wish to only work from my own memory plus a few inspiring thoughts that came to me this morning.
I wish to acknowledge that Dunbar’s work is a wonderful and excellent source of inspiration itself. I realize that my “armchair reflections” pale in comparison to the groundbreaking work Mr. Dunbar did. Nonetheless, since I generally think my own thoughts are immensely awesome, I will unabashedly venture out into what I consider to be largely unknown territory (which is no doubt predominantly unknown to me) with an adventurous spirit of discovery (or perhaps simply as an opportunity to let my brain cells do a couple laps on an otherwise lazy Sunday morning).
I also wish to acknowledge the great patience exhibited this morning by my youngest daughter, to whom I was sharing my plans to write this post, and who also gave me very valuable feedback regarding whether my ideas seemed sort of like sense or maybe here and there might have been more like nonsense.
The general idea is really very simple. Dunbar’s number simply counts the number of contacts. I do recall some differentiation in the quality of these contacts, but my gut feeling is that this aspect was quite minimal (probably simply because of the difficulty of measuring such differences). The way I wish to build on Dunbar’s idea is to propose some ways we might refine this aspect, namely to arrive at some measures which might be good (i.e. valid and reliable) indicators of said relationship quality. Perhaps at a later stage such quantity and quality aspects could be combined into some kind of social integration score (or maybe at least a “whatever” score 😉 ).
It all started with me listening to an interview on the radio related to New Year’s resolutions — exercise, fitness, junk like that. The wise guy (who has published books on these and related topics) mentioned in passing that doing exercise in groups can also help to build relationships, and I think that was the inspirational spark that got my mind and brain cells spinning towards some sort of newfangled solution. Because my mind is a very simple thing, my first solution was also correspondingly simple: count the number of hours of contact (per week). I then thought contacts that didn’t have any contact in a week should be dropped, but I now think it might be better to track a rolling average over a full year (and even if the contact were to break off for a full year, then to nonetheless still keep tracking the statistic).
I realized from the get-go that this statistic was insufficient. Yet I didn’t directly think of any way to improve the measurement of this amorphous concept that itself still remains mostly undefined. As I have been continuing to think about it, the image of the legendary Spock wandering about on some newly discovered planet with his trycorder (as a kid watching the original “Star Trek” television series, there was no doubt in my mind that this gizmo would have been spelled “tricorder”, but I find this revised spelling much more amusing now 😉 ).
After lots and lots of thinking (we’re talking lots^2 here 😛 ), I have come up with another “new and improved” measure: count the vocabulary used per contact. This sounds very simple, but actually “doing the math” appears quite difficult. For example: when I board a bus, I make eye contact with the bus driver and hold up my ticket; the driver then (normally) indicates (usually with a facial expression or perhaps a gesture) the permission to ride along. What is the vocabulary of such a contact? Maybe 1? Or 2? Personally, I would find it much more intellectually pleasing to consider this to be a vocabulary of 0, and to consider only verbal exchanges. As such, the bus driver would remain essentially undifferentiated from a random passerby with whom I might make a short eye contact with, yet with whom I nonetheless have no meaningful relationship whatsoever.
I also find this intellectually pleasing because of how I feel it “actually works” — I notice that simply saying “hello” to someone immediately differentiates them from the anonymous crowd which populates the entire planet.
That is all I feel able to muster this morning — class dismissed! 😀
Socio Business blog 