This Working Life

When size matters at work: Dunbar's number

08.28.2022 - By ABC listenPlay

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Have you heard of the Dunbar number?  It’s the number of social connections one person can maintain at any one time.  It turns out that this also plays out at work.  How is Robin Dunbar’s  research relevant for your workplace? What are the optimum numbers for teams and factories?  How important are social connections and friendships at work, and how do these affect our productivity? Guest: Robin Dunbar is professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. He wrote Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships and his new book, The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups, comes out next year.

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