biology

Robin Dunbar

Robin Dunbar is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Robin Dunbar rather than just read about it. In short: Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar (born 28 June 1947) is a British biological anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, and specialist in primate behaviour. Dunbar is professor emeritus of evolutionary psychology of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford.

Key takeaways

Robin Dunbar belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Robin Dunbar to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Robin Dunbar from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar (born 28 June 1947) is a British biological anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, and specialist in primate behaviour. Dunbar is professor emeritus of evolutionary psychology of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is best known for formulating Dunbar's number, a measurement of the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships".

Education The son of an engineer, Dunbar was privately educated at Magdalen College School, Brackley. He went on to study at the University of Oxford as an undergraduate student at Magdalen College, Oxford, where his teachers included Niko Tinbergen; he completed his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Philosophy in 1969. Dunbar then went on to the Department of Psychology of the University of Bristol and completed his PhD in 1974 on the social organisation of the gelada, Theropithecus gelada, a monkey that is a close relative to baboons.

Career and Research Dunbar spent two years as a freelance science writer. Dunbar told BBC Radio interviewer Jim Al-Khalili in The Life Scientific in 2019 that he "got his first real job" only at the age of 40. Dunbar's career includes appointments at the University of Bristol, University of Cambridge from 1977 until 1982, and University College London from 1987 until 1994. In 1994, Dunbar became Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Liverpool, but left Liverpool in 2007, to take up the post of Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford. In 2012, Dunbar migrated over to the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, after receiving a competitive research grant from the European Research Council. His former postdoctoral students include Anna Machin. Dunbar was formerly co-director of the British Academy Centenary Research Project (BACRP) "From Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain" and was involved in the BACRP "Identifying the Universal Religious Repertoire". Digital versions of selected published articles authored or co-authored by him are available from the University of Liverpool Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology Research Group. In 2015, Dunbar was awarded the Huxley Memorial Medal—established in 1900 in memory of Thomas Henry Huxley—for services to anthropology by the council of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, the highest honour at the disposal of the RAI. Dunbar is also a Humanists UK Distinguished Supporter of Humanism.

Awards and honours 2026, International Cosmos Prize, Expo '90 Foundation, Japan 2019, Human Roots Award, MONREPOS 2015, Huxley Memorial Medal, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 1998, Elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) 1994, ad hominem Chair, Psychology, University of Liverpool

In popular culture Dunbar's work is mentioned in The Big Bang Theory, Season 4, Episode 20 ("The Herb Garden Germination"), when Amy Farrah Fowler is talking with Sheldon Cooper while listening to a lecture by Brian Greene (2011). Dunbar is a featured character in the adaptation of Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind into graphic novel (2020). Dunbar's work is described in the epilogue of Blake Crouch's novel Upgrade (2022).

Published books Dunbar. 1984. Reproductive Decisions: An Economic Analysis of Gelada Baboon Social Strategies. Princeton University Press ISBN 0-691-08360-6 Dunbar. 1987. Demography and Reproduction. In Primate Societies. Smuts, B.B., Cheney, D.L., Seyfarth, R.M., Wrangham, R.W., Struhsaker, T.T. (eds). Chicago & London:University of Chicago Press. pp. 240–249 ISBN 0-226-76715-9 Dunbar. 1988. Primate Social Systems. Chapman Hall and Yale University Press ISBN 0-8014-2087-3 Foley, Robert & Dunbar, Robin (14 October 1989). "Beyond the bones of contention". New Scientist Vol.124 (No.1686) pp. 21–25. Dunbar. 1996. The Trouble with Science. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-91019-2 Dunbar (ed.). 1995. Human Reproductive Decisions. Macmillan ISBN 0-333-62051-8 Dunbar. 1997. Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-36334-5 Runciman, Maynard Smith, & Dunbar (eds.). 1997. Evolution of Culture and Language in Primates and Humans. Oxford University Press. Dunbar, Knight, & Power (eds.). 1999. The Evolution of Culture. Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0-8135-2730-9 Dunbar & Barrett. 2000. Cousins. BBC Worldwide: London ISBN 0-7894-7155-8 Cowlishaw & Dunbar. 2000. Primate Conservation Biology. University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-11636-0 Barrett, Dunbar & Lycett. 2002. Human Evolutionary Psychology. London: Palgrave ISBN 0-691-09621-X Dunbar, Barrett & Lycett. 2005. Evolutionary Psychology, a Beginner's Guide. Oxford: One World Books ISBN 1-85168-356-9 Dunbar. 2004. The Human Story. London: Faber and Faber ISBN 0-571-19133-9 Dunbar. 2010. How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks. London: Faber & Faber ISBN 978-0571253432 (paper) Dunbar. 2014. Human Evolution. Pelican Books ISBN 978-0141975313 Dunbar. 2016. Human Evolution: Our Brains and Behavior (Illustrated) ISBN 0-1906-1678-4 Dunbar. 2021. Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships. Little, Brown and Company ISBN 978-1408711736 Dunbar. 2022. How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures. Pelican Books ISBN 978-0241431788 Camilleri, Rockey & Dunbar. 2023. The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups London: Penguin ISBN 978-1847943620

Papers Dunbar (2020): "Structure and function in human and primate social networks: Implications for diffusion, network stability and health". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 476.2240 (2020): 20200446. Dunbar & Susanne Shultz (2023): "Four errors and a fallacy: pitfalls for the unwary in comparative brain analyses". Biological Reviews 98.4 (2023): 1278–1309. Dunbar (2024): "The social brain hypothesis–thirty years on". Annals of Human Biology 51.1 (2024): 2359920.

References

External links

The Human Behaviour and Evolution Society What Makes us Human Archived 6 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine Pulse Project Podcast: What Makes us Human? (22 October 2008, Oxford) University of Oxford Department of Experimental Psychology profile

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Robin Dunbar

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Robin Dunbar claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Robin Dunbar before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Robin Dunbar ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Robin Dunbar

In research: Robin Dunbar appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Robin Dunbar in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Robin Dunbar is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1947 births, Academics of University College London, Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Robin Dunbar outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Robin Dunbar in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Robin Dunbar means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Robin Dunbar out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Robin Dunbar in simple terms?

Why does Robin Dunbar matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Robin Dunbar?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Robin Dunbar.