Robin Dunbar
Template:Short description Template:DMCA Script error: No such module "Template wrapper".Script error: No such module "Check for conflicting parameters". Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar (born 28 June 1947)[1][2] is a British biological anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, and specialist in primate behaviour.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] 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,[12] a measurement of the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships".[13][14]
Education
The son of an engineer, Dunbar was privately educated at Magdalen College School, Brackley.[15] He went on to study at the University of Oxford as an undergraduate student at Magdalen College, Oxford,[16] where his teachers included Niko Tinbergen; he completed his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Philosophy in 1969.[16] 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.[17]
Career and Research
Dunbar spent two years as a freelance science writer.[2] 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.[18]
Dunbar's career includes appointments at the University of Bristol,[19] 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.[1][20] 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.[citation needed]
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
- 2015, Huxley Memorial Medal, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
- 1998, Elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA)[2]
- 1994, ad hominem Chair, Psychology, University of Liverpool[21]
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 Template:ISBN
- 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 Template:ISBN
- Dunbar. 1988. Primate Social Systems. Chapman Hall and Yale University Press Template:ISBN
- 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. Template:ISBN
- Dunbar (ed.). 1995. Human Reproductive Decisions. Macmillan Template:ISBN
- Dunbar. 1997. Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Harvard University Press. Template:ISBN
- 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 Template:ISBN
- Dunbar & Barrett. 2000. Cousins. BBC Worldwide: London Template:ISBN
- Cowlishaw & Dunbar. 2000. Primate Conservation Biology. University of Chicago Press Template:ISBN
- Barrett, Dunbar & Lycett. 2002. Human Evolutionary Psychology. London: Palgrave Template:ISBN
- Dunbar, Barrett & Lycett. 2005. Evolutionary Psychology, a Beginner's Guide. Oxford: One World Books Template:ISBN
- Dunbar. 2004. The Human Story. London: Faber and Faber Template:ISBN
- Dunbar. 2010. How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks. London: Faber & Faber Template:ISBN (paper)
- Dunbar. 2014. Human Evolution. Pelican Books Template:ISBN
- Dunbar. 2016. Human Evolution: Our Brains and Behavior (Illustrated) Template:ISBN
- Dunbar. 2021. Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships. Little, Brown and Company Template:ISBN
- Dunbar. 2022. How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures. Pelican Books Template:ISBN
- Camilleri, Rockey & Dunbar. 2023. The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups London: Penguin Template:ISBN
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
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- ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."British Academy Fellows Archive". British Academy. Archived from the original on 2 February 2008. Retrieved 2 December 2007.
- ^ a b c Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Professor Robin Dunbar FBA". British Humanist Association. Archived from the original on 17 July 2012. Retrieved 2 December 2007.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Shultz, S.; Dunbar, R. (2010). "Encephalization is not a universal macroevolutionary phenomenon in mammals but is associated with sociality". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (50): 21582–21586. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10721582S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1005246107. PMC 3003036. PMID 21098277.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Hill, R. A.; Bentley, R. A.; Dunbar, R. I. M. (2008). "Network scaling reveals consistent fractal pattern in hierarchical mammalian societies". Biology Letters. 4 (6): 748–751. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2008.0393. PMC 2614163. PMID 18765349.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, R. I. M. (2007). "Male and female brain evolution is subject to contrasting selection pressures in primates". BMC Biology. 5: 21. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-5-21. PMC 1876205. PMID 17493267.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, R. I. M. (1995). "The price of being at the top". Nature. 373 (6509): 22–23. Bibcode:1995Natur.373...22D. doi:10.1038/373022a0. PMID 7800033. S2CID 4310682.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, R. (1997). "The monkeys' defence alliance". Nature. 386 (6625): 555–7. Bibcode:1997Natur.386..555D. doi:10.1038/386555a0. PMID 9121575. S2CID 2064690.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, R. I. M.; Pawlowski, B.; Lipowicz, A. (2000). "Tall men have more reproductive success". Nature. 403 (6766): 156. Bibcode:2000Natur.403..156P. doi:10.1038/35003107. PMID 10646589. S2CID 7722496.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, R. I. M. (2001). "Evolutionary biology: What's in a baboon's behind?". Nature. 410 (6825): 158. doi:10.1038/35065773. PMID 11258375. S2CID 31256568.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, R. (2003). "PSYCHOLOGY: Evolution of the Social Brain". Science. 302 (5648): 1160–1161. doi:10.1126/science.1092116. PMID 14615522. S2CID 144329128.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, R. I. M.; Shultz, S. (2007). "Evolution in the Social Brain". Science. 317 (5843): 1344–1347. Bibcode:2007Sci...317.1344D. doi:10.1126/science.1145463. PMID 17823343. S2CID 1516792.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
dunbarsnowas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dávid-Barrett, T.; Dunbar, R. I. M. (22 August 2013). "Processing power limits social group size: computational evidence for the cognitive costs of sociality". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences. 280 (1765) 20131151. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.1151. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 3712454. PMID 23804623.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, Robin I. M. (30 September 2014). "How conversations around campfires came to be". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (39): 14013–14014. Bibcode:2014PNAS..11114013D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1416382111. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 4191795. PMID 25246572.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Brown, Andrew (15 May 2003). "Science to watch people by". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
whoswhowas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, Robin Ian MacDonald (1974). The social organisation of the gelada monkey (Theropithecus gelada) (PhD thesis). University of Bristol.
- ^ "The Life Scientific" interview, BBC Radio Four, 23 July 2019.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dunbar, R. I. M.; Dunbar, E. P. (1977). "Dominance and reproductive success among female gelada baboons". Nature. 266 (5600): 351–352. Bibcode:1977Natur.266..351D. doi:10.1038/266351a0. PMID 404565. S2CID 4159540.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Prof. Robin Dunbar FBA". liv.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 4 November 2007. Retrieved 2 December 2007.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Faculty of Science" (PDF). liv.ac.uk. Retrieved 2 December 2007.[permanent dead link]
External links
- The Human Behaviour and Evolution Society
- What Makes us Human Script error: No such module "webarchive". Pulse Project Podcast: What Makes us Human? (22 October 2008, Oxford)
- University of Oxford Department of Experimental Psychology profile
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