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first impressions are difficult to change.
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David McRaney |
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Dunbar's Number THE MISCONCEPTION: There is a Rolodex in your mind with the names and faces of everyone you've ever known. THE TRUTH: You can maintain relationships and keep up with only around 150 people at once.
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David McRaney |
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Sure enough, all the sciences that study tribes, bands, and villages have approximated ancient groups usually maxed out around 150 people. This is the approximate upper limit to how many people you can trust and count on for favors, whom you can call up and have a conversation with. Once you go over 150 people, Dunbar says about 42 percent of the group's time would have to be spent worrying about one another's relationships.
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David McRaney |
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Once people started coming up with ways to maintain larger groups, like armies, cities, and nations, humans started subdividing those groups. Dunbar's number explains why big groups are made of smaller, more manageable groups like companies, platoons, and squads--or branches, divisions, departments, and committees. No human institution can efficiently function above 150 members without hierarchies, ranks, roles, and divisions.
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David McRaney |
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As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his book The Tipping Point, if a company grows beyond 150 people, productivity sharply declines until the company divides its outlying entities into smaller groups. You function better in a cluster--that way everyone in that cluster is connected to one another and only certain individuals connect your cluster to other clusters.
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David McRaney |
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Dunbar's most recent research suggests even power-users of Facebook with 1,000 or more friends still communicate regularly with only around 150 people, and of that 150 they strongly communicate with a group of less than 20.
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David McRaney |
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You can maintain a giant number of weak ties to people on Facebook, Twitter, and whatever comes next, much like you can in a giant company. Strong ties, however, require constant grooming. People who use the number of friends they have on Facebook as a metric of their social standing are fooling themselves. You can share videos of fainting goats with hundreds of acquaintances and thousands of followers, but you can trust a secret only with ..
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David McRaney |
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Selling Out THE MISCONCEPTION: Both consumerism and capitalism are sustained by corporations and advertising. THE TRUTH: Both consumerism and capitalism are driven by competition among consumers for status.
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David McRaney |
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Social Loafing THE MISCONCEPTION: When you are joined by others in a task, you work harder and become more accomplished. THE TRUTH: Once part of a group, you tend to put in less effort because you know your work will be pooled together with others'.
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David McRaney |
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When a movie begins with the words "Based on a True Story," what crosses your mind? Do you assume every line of dialogue, every bit of clothing and song in the background is the same as it was in the true event on which the film was based? Of course you don't. You know movies like Pearl Harbor or Erin Brockovich take artistic license with facts, shaping them so a coherent story will unfold with a beginning, middle, and end. Even biopics abo..
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David McRaney |
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So, how about spanking? After reading all this, do you think you are ready to know what science has to say about the issue? Here's the skinny: Psychologists are still studying the matter, but the current thinking says spanking generates compliance in children under seven if done infrequently, in private, and using only the hands. Now, here's a slight correction: Other methods of behavior modification, such as positive reinforcement, token e..
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David McRaney |
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The recent fuss over our oversharing culture and over the possible loss of privacy is just noisy ignorance. As a citizen of the Internet, you obfuscate the truth of your character. You hide your fears and trasgressions and vulnerable yearnings for meaning, for purpose, for connection. In a world where you can control everything presented to an audience, domestic or imaginary, what is laid bare depends on who you believe is on the other side..
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David McRaney |
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Baumeister and his group wrote in the social-exclusion paper that being part of society means accepting a bargain between you and others. If you will self-regulate and not be selfish, then you get to stay and enjoy the rewards of having a circle of friends and society as a whole, but if you break that bargain, society will break its promise and reject you. Your friend groups will stop inviting you to parties and will unfollow you on Twitter..
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David McRaney |
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The restaurant employees hoaxed by Officer Scott would later say this was what happened to them.
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David McRaney |
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David McRaney |
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Cognitive biases are predicable patterns of thought and behavior that lead you to draw incorrect conclusions.
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David McRaney |
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Besides death, your destiny is not inescapable.
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destiny
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David McRaney |