Dunbar's number

proper noun

A suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 250, with a commonly used value of 150.

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Meanings

proper noun

alternative Dunbar number

  1. A suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 250, with a commonly used value of 150.

    Dunbar's number might have remained a curiosity but for the fact that subsequent research found that this number has arisen repeatedly, across the planet, in terms of actual human social group sizes.

    2020, Michael Wooldridge, The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI, Penguin UK, →ISBN

Origin

Proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

Dunbar's number. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Dunbar's%20number

MLA

“Dunbar's number.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Dunbar's%20number. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Dunbar's number,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Dunbar's%20number.

Source: Dunbar's number on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.