{"id":215310,"date":"2025-06-03T21:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T02:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/size-matters-the-link-between-social-groups-and-human-evolution"},"modified":"2025-06-03T21:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T02:30:11","slug":"size-matters-the-link-between-social-groups-and-human-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/size-matters-the-link-between-social-groups-and-human-evolution","title":{"rendered":"Size matters: The link between social groups and human evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/size-matters-the-link-between-social-groups-and-human-evolution.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Humans are social creatures; we live in family groups, socialise with friends, and work with colleagues. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar\u2019s \u2018social brain hypothesis\u2019 suggests that brain size is directly related to social group size in mammals. The bigger the group, the bigger the brain. In this interview with Research Outreach, we find out how Dunbar developed his theory as well as his now famous \u2018Dunbar\u2019s number\u2019<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Robin Dunbar discusses his eponymous \u2018Dunbar\u2019s Number\u2019, primates to people, and why size matters with social groups and evolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Humans are social creatures; we live in family groups, socialise with friends, and work with colleagues. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar\u2019s \u2018social brain hypothesis\u2019 suggests that brain size is directly related to social group size in mammals. The bigger the group, the bigger the brain. In this interview with Research Outreach, we find out how Dunbar [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":701,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[385,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/701"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}