Friends, Robin Dunbar
Friends, Robin Dunbar
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Friends
Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships

Author: Robin Dunbar

Narrator: Hugh Kermode

Unabridged: 12 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/04/2021

Categories: Nonfiction, Psychology


Synopsis

'Fascinating...In essence, the number and quality of our friendships may have a bigger influence on our happiness, health and mortality risk than anything else in life save for giving up smoking' Guardian, Book of the Day

Friends matter to us, and they matter more than we think. The single most surprising fact to emerge out of the medical literature over the last decade or so has been that the number and quality of the friendships we have has a bigger influence on our happiness, health and even mortality risk than anything else except giving up smoking.

Robin Dunbar is the world-renowned psychologist and author who famously discovered Dunbar's number: how our capacity for friendship is limited to around 150 people. In Friends, he looks at friendship in the round, at the way different types of friendship and family relationships intersect, or at the complex of psychological and behavioural mechanisms that underpin friendships and make them possible - and just how complicated the business of making and keeping friends actually is.

Mixing insights from scientific research with first person experiences and culture, Friends explores and integrates knowledge from disciplines ranging from psychology and anthropology to neuroscience and genetics in a single magical weave that allows us to peer into the incredible complexity of the social world in which we are all so deeply embedded.

Working at the coalface of the subject at both research and personal levels, Robin Dunbar has written the definitive book on how and why we are friends.

About Robin Dunbar

Robin Dunbar is an evolutionary psychologist and former director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. His acclaimed books include How Many Friends Does One Person Need? and Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, described by Malcolm Gladwell as "a marvellous work of popular science."


Reviews

Goodreads review by Puddles

Definitely some insightful things here. However, I think there's also a lot of conjecture and the author seems to have some very ... interesting.... ideas about women - at one point he suggests that women talk less in mixed-sex large groups because the pitch of their voices makes it difficult for th......more

Goodreads review by Joe

In this book, eminent Professor Robin Dunbar discusses friendships. His treatise covers the evolutionary origin of friendship, the brain mechanisms of individual differences in social skills, differences in friendship style between men and women, changing friendships across the lifespan, differences......more

Maybe I had the wrong expectations, I expected something more practical than a review of all the science experiments the author was involved in. Some of the insights are interesting (e.g. the 7 pillars of friendship), though very much spread out through the book. The last chapter feels rushed to put......more


Quotes

A fascinating study of friendship Observer

Friends offers poignant observations about how we have evolved to rely on one another for help and companionship - and how these bonds make our lives meaningful The i

A timely arrival Atlantic