[HN Gopher] Conversations are better with four people
___________________________________________________________________
Conversations are better with four people
Author : nomilk
Score : 117 points
Date : 2024-12-12 13:05 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thetimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thetimes.com)
| nomilk wrote:
| The bit I could get to in the HTML:
|
| > Why conversations are better with four people
|
| > Three might be a crowd but four appears to be the magic number
| when it comes to conversation. And, according to an academic who
| has spent decades studying how we socialise, William Shakespeare
| instinctively understood that.
|
| > Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolutionary
| psychologist at the University of Oxford, is known for "Dunbar's
| number," which alludes to his theory that most of us are able to
| sustain about 150 social connections.
|
| > But his research has also explored how people act in smaller
| groups. At Cheltenham Science Festival he explained that when it
| comes to having an enjoyable chat, the upper limit is a gang of
| four. When social groups have five or more members, the chances
| of them laughing together plummet.
|
| If anyone's got the whole thing, please post.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Three might be a crowd but four appears to be the magic number
| when it comes to conversation. And, according to an academic
| who has spent decades studying how we socialise, William
| Shakespeare instinctively understood that.
|
| Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolutionary
| psychologist at the University of Oxford, is known for
| "Dunbar's number", which alludes to his theory that most of us
| are able to sustain about 150 social connections.
|
| But his research has also explored how people act in smaller
| groups. At Cheltenham Science Festival he explained that when
| it comes to having an enjoyable chat, the upper limit is a gang
| of four. When social groups have five or more members, the
| chances of them laughing together plummets.
|
| He said: "You very rarely get more than four people in a
| conversation. In the normal run of things, when a fifth person
| joins a group, it'll become two conversations within about 20
| seconds." Alternatively, a "lecture" situation develops in
| which one person holds court and the others act as an audience.
|
| In larger groups, "you have to decide whether the person who is
| speaking is really so important you'd rather be standing there
| saying nothing", he said. If the speaker is not very
| interesting, the audience tends to splinter into groups of four
| or fewer. Dunbar believes that the underlying reason is that we
| can only track what a certain number of people are likely to be
| thinking at one time.
|
| Scientists call this the "theory of mind", which involves being
| able to see the world from another person's perspective. Also
| known as "mentalising", it is crucial for conversation because
| people often use imprecise language, which makes context
| important. "The language we use is full of metaphors and
| unfinished sentences. The listener has to be able to figure out
| what it is the speaker is trying to say," said Dunbar.
|
| Additionally, the speaker must track whether those they are
| talking to are following their meaning. Dunbar believes that
| the limits of our ability to predict the thoughts of others in
| this way explains why groups that work in challenging
| situations -- such as SAS patrols and surgical teams -- tend to
| do best when there are four members.
|
| In The Social Brain, co-authored by Dunbar, he argues that
| Shakespeare must have intuitively known about this phenomenon
| as it is rare for his plays to have more than four significant
| characters speaking in one scene.
|
| He wrote: "[Shakespeare] instinctively understood the
| mentalising capacities of his audience. He was anxious to
| ensure his audience wasn't cognitively overloaded by the number
| of minds in the action on stage. [It is] a masterclass in the
| study of human psychology."
| calf wrote:
| Not exactly Shakespeare but this reminds me what I enjoyed so
| much about the opening act of Cirque du Soleil's O show was
| how it used so many acrobats and dancers to choreograph a
| concurrent scene, you were just overloaded with what you
| could pay attention to at any one moment. Their specially
| designed stage was large enough to show multiple things going
| on in a 3D space.
|
| Bach's fugues using 4 voices and other such classical music
| is also an interesting example, the complexity is often
| written to be beyond the reach of even an experienced
| listener to grasp everything concurrently, and the
| performance of this kind of music is necessary highly
| challenging for the pianist as well.
| felipevb wrote:
| http://archive.today/WTDBs
| po wrote:
| I suspect this is related to why a string quartet is the right
| number of musical voices. Two violins, viola, and cello give you
| a very fulfilling number of separate ideas to track without
| overwhelming you.
| consf wrote:
| Add more players, like in a quintet or sextet, and the clarity
| can start to blur, much like a larger group discussion
| chubot wrote:
| That's also a "classical" rock band - vocals, guitar, bass,
| drums (e.g. Beatles any many others)
| maccard wrote:
| Most rock bands have more than one guitar.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Which could be in the vocalists hands in the gp's example
| keeping the number at four.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Bass is a guitar in 99% rock bands.
|
| I have not seen a good band with more than 4 people on
| stage simultaneously.
| shesstillamodel wrote:
| AC/DC. Foo Fighters. Guns 'n Roses. Queens of the Stone
| Age...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| well I have not seen them in particular ^^
|
| There are good bands like that but not most.
| datameta wrote:
| Let's not forget the synthesists
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, Journey,
| Radiohead, Guns and Roses, Fleetwood Mac, AC/DC, The
| Eagles
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Have not seen them either.
|
| You pick really popular names but in most regular bands
| when there is more people there is worse link between
| them...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "Music for 18 Musicians" by Steve Reich is probably one
| of the masterworks of the second half of the 20th
| century.
|
| Any vaguely disco-adjacent band will have more than 4
| people on stage because there will be at least keyboards
| and horns in addition to drums, bass, guitar and vocals.
| Even a band that simply adds an additional person player
| percussion to a typical 4 piece exceeds your limit yet
| can wonderfully enhance the music.
|
| If you haven't seen any of those bands, then that's your
| loss, but provides no reason to try to generalize about
| the right size for a live band.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Vocals are often a person who is also playing an
| instrument. So in a 4-person band you can have up to four
| voices, lead and rhythm guitar (or maybe keyboard),
| drums, and bass.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> I have not seen a good band with more than 4 people on
| stage simultaneously
|
| Glenn Branca Orchestra.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Also the traditional barbershop quartet for acapella.
|
| Interestingly, I like the 5-piece versions of all 3 of these:
| add a keyboardist to the rock band, a piano or harpsichord to
| the classical string or woodwind quartet, a female vocalist
| to the acapella group. Having two leads lets you do much more
| intricate countermelodies and harmonies.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| A string quartet consists of 4 tonally adjacent instruments,
| and is thus much more like 4 humans talking.
|
| A "classical" rock band consists of 4 utterly different
| instruments from a tonal perspective, and is thus nothing
| like 4 humans talking. Same thing for jazz - and its why you
| can have multiple instruments performing simultaneously and
| in ways that are not obviously connected to each other.
| Aidevah wrote:
| I recall that Charles Rosen wrote somewhere that one of the
| reasons the string quartet took off in the classical period was
| that it allowed the playing of all the notes in a dominant
| seventh chord without double stops. Although this was probably
| a better explanation for the relative paucity of string trios
| in the output of Mozart (1) and Beethoven (0). The
| establishment of four parts as the "standard" scoring for vocal
| ensembles can be traced back to the 15th century.
|
| On the other hand the second and more famous dining (and
| conversation) club founded by Dr Johnson had originally 9
| members, and gradually grew from that to dozens. Although many
| including Johnson may have not been entirely happy with the
| expansion.
| jancsika wrote:
| I think you're taking the metaphor about a string quartet as a
| "conversation among equals" too literally.
|
| In terms of perception, I'm not sure there's much of a
| relationship to a human conversation. To make things equal, the
| string players would need to take turns soloing while the
| others wait more or less silently to respond, each with their
| own solo response. You'd be bored out of your gourd if string
| quartets were written that way.
|
| But more to the point, the vast majority of time in a string
| quartet is devoted to two or more of the players producing
| phrases of music _in parallel_ , and that is musically coherent
| and pleasing to the players and audience. Most humans cannot
| track two humans speaking in parallel _at all_. That alone
| tells us that music cognition is a very different phenomenon
| than speech cognition.
|
| In short, I'm not sure why a string quartet would be considered
| the optimal genre for humans to produce music together. And
| even if it is, the reasons why are even less likely to do with
| the protocols around human speech cognition, and certainly not
| with some bizarre equivalent of the "theory of mind" associated
| with the musical phrase produced by one of the instruments[1].
|
| 1: Small digression-- In Elliott Carter's 2nd String Quartet he
| actually started with a concept that each instrument was a kind
| of "character" in a play among the quartet. In this case, the
| problem with OP's metaphor becomes obvious even in the
| introduction-- the homogenous timbre of a string quartet makes
| it difficult to hear the differences among the characters.
| (IIRC I think even Carter admitted this.)
| consf wrote:
| This makes me wonder if our preference for group size might
| extend beyond conversation to other areas, like collaboration or
| even entertainment
| HPsquared wrote:
| A lot of TV shows have three presenters. The fourth is the
| viewer, I guess.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Pair programming is pretty popular. Has anyone tried "trio" or
| "quad" programming?
| go2europa wrote:
| I've tried a few three person programming sessions with a
| live pycharm collaborative session (whatever they call it) -
| what I thought was interesting is we naturally divided
| responsibilities.
|
| 2 people would do more direct pair programming of one doing
| more thinking / design / instructing and the other is the
| workhorse and supplemental designer. The third would be the
| polisher and tester, and participate in design as well when
| able to.
|
| Idk if there is a role-based analogue in larger social groups
| but interesting to think about.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I think it needs clarification. What I've found is that:
|
| * 2 people is ideal for serious, deep conversation
|
| * 3-4 is ideal for more humorous, relaxing conversation, but
| precludes the deepest intellectual topics
| bbarnett wrote:
| I wonder if that's why some people are introverts, without even
| realising the cause.
|
| I'll do small talk, but it's more boring than mowing the lawn
| with a pair of scissors. I find large gatherings completely
| boring, with nothing but noise involved because, well.. it's
| all just meaningless chatter.
|
| Maybe some people aren't introverts, just "talking to more than
| a few people means this is dumb" verts.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I concur, and this can be solved once you get the hang of
| actually creating a small bubble inside crowds and accept the
| FOMO of missing the rest of the event to have a quality
| conversation for a few hours.
|
| Not everybody is made to ride a wave of people. But you can
| find a way to enjoy it in a different fashion. I find it true
| for a lot of situations, actually.
|
| You don't have to follow all the rules.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's probably a certain unconference aspect to larger
| groups. (i.e. if something isn't working for you feel free
| to move on.) "This is really interesting but I _really_
| need to say hello to my friend over there who I haven 't
| seen in ages." Of course, there's some art to politic
| transitions.
| christophilus wrote:
| I'm an introvert. I prefer long stretches of solitude to just
| about anything else. I need people and interaction, but in
| very small doses.
| lizzas wrote:
| Me too. I think this what introversion means.
|
| Being quiet at bigger gatherings is a different thing.
| gyomu wrote:
| This is why I always go outside to hang out with the smokers
| at parties, even though I don't smoke. The conversations are
| always more interesting in those small circles of 2-3 people
| who went outside for a cigarette than in the main party.
| lizzas wrote:
| It is worse when story tellers come in and hog conversations.
| It is even worse worse when there are more than one and it is
| one upmanship on the war stories. Find this unpleasant and
| tiring. I prefer listening from more people.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yeah I dislike it when people always jump in with their
| experience rather than relating to the person who is
| talking.
|
| I figured out that some people are "relators" and some
| people are "analyzers and askers" and it's usually the
| latter that is much more fun to talk to. But I know that
| two "relators" who seem to talk past each other often also
| seem to enjoy this method.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| My significant others' family we see several times a year
| has several such folks, and at least three of the top level
| people at the small company where I work are the same way.
| I've grown to be able to handle it much better than I could
| 20 years ago, but it's still deeply exhausting.
|
| On a bad day it will drain my energy to the point where I
| truly lose most of my ability to function and need
| significant time to recover.
| hippari2 wrote:
| Agree, and I often derange the conversation to cut their
| story shot lol ( sorry ). Unless they're really determined
| to continue.
|
| I notice other people do this to. And there are even
| different skill levels to how smooth they can cut into the
| story tellers.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > derange the conversation
|
| I was expecting to read "derail" there, but that's not
| bad either - I mean, it's bad, but in a deranged way ...
| Swizec wrote:
| > I'll do small talk, but it's more boring than mowing the
| lawn with a pair of scissors. I find large gatherings
| completely boring, with nothing but noise involved because,
| well.. it's all just meaningless chatter.
|
| The trick I've found is to make the conversation more
| interesting, if you think it's boring. 9 times out of 10
| everyone is just jonesing for _someone_ to take it somewhere
| fun, but afraid to make the first step. YOU can make that
| step.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > The trick I've found is to make the conversation more
| interesting, if you think it's boring. 9 times out of 10
| everyone is just jonesing for someone to take it somewhere
| fun, but afraid to make the first step.
|
| Not in 2024. You're 100% going to get a person who's going
| to get offended and make a scene.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Which is why I refuse to hang out with people who fulfill
| these two conditions at once:
|
| 1. They're boring
|
| 2. Their opinion on me matters
| rr808 wrote:
| To me this means 1) You aren't hanging around the right
| people 2) You aren't talking about stuff you're interested in
| 3) You need to drink more.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I mean most people are just pretty boring. I find that people
| talk about:
|
| Work (generally not a great idea at parties, maybe a bit more
| acceptable if it's hosted at work, or if you do something
| really unusual that others find interesting, _and_ are able
| to talk about it in layman 's terms).
|
| Sports (I like sports well enough but am not passionate about
| any team or sport. I cannot add much to a conversation about
| specific players, games, coaches, statistics, strategy).
|
| Wine, whiskey, tequila, food: See Sports, above.
|
| Their kids or their vacations or other bragging. Nobody
| cares.
|
| Reminiscing about some experience that a group of them had
| together. Hard to join in, if you're not part of that group
| or that experience.
|
| Politics, conspiracies. Just no.
|
| Interesting people who talk to people they don't already know
| are rare.
| ghaff wrote:
| You get into more people and you're likely to just be hesitant
| to go there on a lot of topics--at least unless you know
| everyone pretty well.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I think the easiest way to look at it is that you start with
| every topic available, then you filter down to what people are
| comfortable with. So, you can only ever lose topics as you add
| people, looking for the lowest common denominators.
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| 90 years ago in _Serve it Forth_ , the glorious M. F. K. Fisher
| stated definitively that the maximum number of people at an ideal
| dinner party is six, and probably three or four. Glad to see
| she's being upheld! Of course, the individuals probably matter
| more:
|
| >It is, though, very dull to be at a table with dull people, no
| matter what their sex. Dining partners, regardless of gender,
| social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for
| their ability to eat--and drink!--with the right mixture of
| abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its
| preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.
| wslh wrote:
| > 90 years ago in Serve it Forth...
|
| I wish there were a tool that could quickly connect new
| articles to older ideas, highlighting how much of what seems
| original today often builds on existing work, or just was
| mentioned before.
|
| It wouldn't need to be as precise as mathematics or the hard
| sciences, just probabilistic enough to reveal meaningful
| connections.
| jackthetab wrote:
| That would be _tres cool_.
|
| Thinking out loud here...That could be like an LLM that is
| tokenized on ideas as opposed to words/fragments, no?
|
| I'm sure someone has worked on this, but how would a computer
| extract an idea from a bunch of words (sentences?) ?
|
| Looks like another rabbit hole to add to the list...
| wslh wrote:
| I would say that tracing concepts back to their origins
| could be a good benchmark for evaluating AI models.
|
| In the context of the article you mentioned, Robin Dunbar's
| research and the Max4 Principle are referenced [1], along
| with a relevant Wikipedia article [2]. Expanding further,
| one can trace earlier foundational works, such as "The
| Primary Group as Cooley Defines It" [3], and even earlier
| sociological contributions by thinkers like Auguste Comte.
|
| As for the "Serve it Forth" answer, I haven't come across
| that yet except when, obviously?, I named it explicitly.
|
| [1] https://newcreate.org/max-4-principle/
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_in_small_groups
|
| [3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/4105179
| hindsightbias wrote:
| It could only go back to 1992 or so. For most people, history
| is whatever is linkable or the 5% of pre-1992 stuff that is
| popular enough to rate a dead wiki footnote.
| wslh wrote:
| The Google Ngram Viewer indicates that data was indexed
| well before 1992, even if the resource isn't publicly
| accessible [1]. This likely reflects the reality that new
| content often garners more attention than old content,
| which doesn't align with the "pay-per-click" model of
| monetization.
|
| [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=darwin&ye
| ar_st...
| ghaff wrote:
| When I was a full-time IT industry analyst, one of the things
| that regularly annoyed me was overly large tables at dinner. A
| lot of factors were in play including the fact that many
| analysts felt very strongly about being at a table with the
| "important people" (tm) in the room. But if you were at even a
| round table seating 8+ people, it meant in practice you only
| talked with a few people who were reasonably adjacent.
|
| I would say a 4-6 person table is about the largest where
| everyone can be talking with all the other people.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Six can be a bit of magic number for a table in a larger
| crowd, because people tend to be in groups of 2 or 4, so a
| table for six (apparently) means you're inviting/ causing
| groups to mix.
| rr808 wrote:
| Dinner parties at someone's house are such a lost art. I'm
| going to use this winter to start to bring them back!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My parents used to host dinner parties. Actual sit-down
| dinners at a table with place settings, not pizza with paper
| plates. They are a lot of work, especially if you do the
| cooking yourself. I was pretty young and only remember them
| vaguely, but they stopped because nobody ever reciprocated.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| The problem with dinner parties is that they only work if
| all attendees like each other equally. Any group of people
| talking at once will boil down to the lowest common
| denominator, so one bad guest can easily ruin the whole
| event. Meanwhile during a pizza party it's okay to chat in
| a smaller group, which means that when you have a complex
| network of "A likes B but doesn't like C who is best friend
| of B", there's much higher chance of making it possible to
| somehow divide the guests into sensible subgroups.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Well that brings up another thing that we seem to have
| lost in society: how to be pleasant at a social event
| even if you don't like or find agreeable everyone else
| there.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Oh, I can perfectly do this! Actually, I'm very good at
| this! It's just that after 8 hours of doing so for 5 days
| in a row, I don't have any more energy for that.
| wellix wrote:
| Do you have any tips on how to perfectly coexist with
| disagreeable people?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It sort of depends on a mutual politeness or the sense
| that a dinner party is not the time or place to bring up
| (or persist in discussing) something controversial. If
| someone insists on being an asshole and spoiling the
| event there's not a lot you can do, but it seems that
| more people used to have the social graces to not to
| spoil an event they were invited to, and would be
| embarassed if they did.
| mcsniff wrote:
| Consider I, myself, might be disagreeable to others and
| they seem to perfectly coexist with me (so far).
|
| Every invitation to fight doesn't have to be accepted.
| aksss wrote:
| The nice thing about dinner parties is that you can
| choose who to invite (and not invite).
| etrautmann wrote:
| Both are great! We love having people over for a nicely
| presented dinner or pizza. The import part is getting
| people together.
| pessimizer wrote:
| People are still doing it with game nights: have dinner, then
| play a board/card game together (usually with drinks.) In the
| 50s, Bridge or Dominoes was a big married couple date.
|
| I'd like to see a revival of the old setup where everyone has
| dinner, then everybody in turn, individually and/or in
| groups, does a musical performance, poetry reading, or
| interesting lecture to entertain everyone else.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Pro tip 1: Potluck! Cooking _and_ organizing can be a lot of
| work.
|
| Pro tip 1a: Hot pot! You supply the pot and broth; guests
| bring the rest.
|
| Pro tip 2: The first one will be waaay harder; then it'll get
| easier, as you get a track record and you don't need to
| recruit (or "train") guests; they're already in and already
| trained :)
|
| Pro tip 3: They get easier, fast, as you both 1) get practice
| and 2) learn what _doesn't_ matter
|
| Pro tip 3: The first people to show up _will_ ask to help;
| plan something for them to do (I do a make-a-pizza party; I
| have them grate the mozzarella)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I like that even as someone nearly 60 years old there are still
| new words to learn. TIL "degustation" - the act of tasting with
| relish; savoring.
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| The article quotes Dunbar as saying "In the normal run of things,
| when a fifth person joins a group, it'll become two conversations
| within about 20 seconds." I've noticed something similar. The
| article suggests this might be because of the difficulty we have
| imagining what multiple other people are thinking, but I suspect
| other causes also play a part.
|
| If I'm in a group of five or more, and I think too long about
| what somebody said, or about how to respond, I find there are two
| conversations going on without me. In a group of four, the only
| way it can split into two conversations is if I participate. If I
| don't, the other three have no choice but to maintain (at most) a
| single conversation, making it easier for me to rejoin.
| eschneider wrote:
| That's not so much because it's five people as it's a new
| person.
| em-bee wrote:
| in my experience it is more dynamic than that. based on tech
| meetings that i have been to, it depends on the topic currently
| being discussed. larger groups will break apart if not everyone
| is interested. it also depends on the arrangement. if a few
| people stand in a circle and more join the circle, the
| conversation won't split, because for that to happen they would
| actually have to leave the circle and create a new one.
| Zancarius wrote:
| This is a really interesting observation, because I'm in an
| adult discussion class in Sunday school that is arranged like
| a circle, and I've been trying to figure out why it seems
| that structure works so well at limiting conversational
| divergence.
|
| It seems that when everyone is forced to look at each other,
| it's harder to divest from the main conversation without
| drawing your attention away from the remainder of the group.
| It seems better for fostering discussion with a single
| speaker at a time since everyone can look at that person all
| at once.
|
| It's not perfect but for larger groups the "circle strategy"
| definitely seems to work well.
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Probably because people can focus on 3 - 4 things at a time.
| iluvcommunism wrote:
| 4 people just means 3 people talking and me eating food.
| belter wrote:
| Always assumed the reason why conversations or business meetings,
| should not have more than four persons was due to Metcalfe's
| law...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
| schindlabua wrote:
| I find large groups exist in three states of matter:
|
| 1. crystalline / couple position: Couples sit around the table,
| there is about 15cm distance between each molecule. One person at
| the table holds the conch and speaks.
|
| 2. bipolar / sex-segregated: One end of the table holds all men,
| the other all women. The women talk about men and the men talk
| about poop and race cars.
|
| 3. gaseous: All people move freely around the room and bounce off
| each other, there is vigourous chatter everywhere. Often there is
| alcohol involved.
|
| Your job as a host is to increase the temperature to where all
| molecules break apart and you reach gaseous forms of
| communication.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Absolutely an overlooked responsibility in hosting is making
| sure everyone is included and enjoying the experience. Or at
| least making the effort.
| gregorymichael wrote:
| Three-way group chats have been really great for me (as a 45 year
| old male) for keeping connection with my guy friends. Have a
| dozen of them or so. Small enough to still feel intimate. Big
| enough that someone replies / keeps the conversation going.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| It also depends on the people a lot. There are at least two types
| of people who are tiring to be around:
|
| 1. The one who is very slow to get to the point. At around 10
| second mark you can see where the story is going, but still you
| have to sit there for several minutes listening the person get
| there.
|
| 2. The one who has endless amount of stories about themselves.
| Initially you think it's interesting and entertaining, but soon
| it dawns on you that the stories are actually boring and waste
| your time. Typically people like this have developed a sense that
| people don't like to listen to them, and have excellent defenses
| against all attempts to shut them down politely.
| Jasondells wrote:
| I get the point about conversations naturally splitting when
| there are 5+ people... definitely happens to me all the time. But
| I wonder if it's really just about mental limits, or if there's
| something else going on? Like, isn't it also about the vibe of
| the group or the type of people involved? Some groups are just
| better at keeping everyone engaged no matter the size- like
| certain friend groups or teams that have great dynamics.
|
| Also, not sure if the "four is magic" thing holds up
| everywhere... In my experience, some of the best conversations
| happen with just two people. Like really deep, meaningful stuff
| you can't get with more people. And for bigger groups, there's
| often this chaos energy that can be fun in its own way. Yeah,
| it's not the same as an intimate chat, but it's not worse, just
| different.
|
| That said, I do like the idea that our brains are wired for
| certain sizes - makes sense when you think about the mental
| juggling it takes to track other people's thoughts and reactions.
| And I love how Dunbar tied this to Shakespeare--kinda cool that
| he instinctively kept scenes small to avoid "cognitive overload."
| Makes me wonder if modern writers and creators even think about
| this stuff or just stumble into it.
|
| So yeah, the mental limits idea is interesting, but I feel like
| the type of people, the setting, and even the purpose of the
| group matter a lot too. Sometimes it's not the number of people,
| but how good they are at making everyone feel included... which
| is maybe a rarer skill than we think.
| nostrademons wrote:
| My experience is more that 4-5 is optimal, and groups splinter
| into 3+3 at 6. It could be because I'm an introvert and tend to
| hang out with other introverts, though. A group of 5 will usually
| have 2-3 people actively talking and 2-3 listening and
| occasionally contributing only if they have something worthwhile
| to say. 5 extroverts, in my experience, are unmanageably loud and
| will usually split into 2+3.
|
| Note the sample bias in this. If you're studying _social
| gatherings_ , introverts tend to disproportionately not attend
| these, because they are energy-draining. If you _are_ an
| introvert, however, then any gathering you are part of will by
| definition have at least one introvert in it.
| balderdash wrote:
| I think the big question is the components of the groups':
|
| 1) willingness or desire to contribute (hopefully everyone does
|
| 2) the discipline of the participants (I find a growing trend of
| people wanting to talk over each other, start talking before
| someone has finished their thought, people wanting to dominate
| the conversation)
|
| I've had conversations that are intolerable with 2/4 people
| because they're either hard to talk to or talking over you,
| conversely I've had lovely conversations with 8 people that have
| gone extremely well.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| > I find a growing trend of people wanting to talk over each
| other, start talking before someone has finished their thought,
| people wanting to dominate the conversation
|
| Been noticing this at work meetings. It's annoying because if
| you want to be heard, you have to become part of the problem...
| I hate it. I wonder if social media has anything to do with
| this, since it created a way to "win" conversations, and
| heavily encourages you to do so. Zoom meetings do amplify this
| problem, so maybe it's always been like this and I forgot?
|
| In large social groups I shutdown if people talk over me. I
| don't want to fight to be part of a conversation. It's fine,
| I'll have moments here or there, though it does make me look
| quiet and weird... but there are other friends that don't talk
| over me and I doubt they would say the same thing (the quiet
| part at least lol)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Zoom converstations are impossible with more than a few
| people, because there is an unnatural latency (even if
| slight) and the subtle body language cues that let you know
| it's a good time to speak are totally hidden. So three people
| start talking at once, then everyone stops and is quiet for a
| few seconds, then two people say something, etc. It's even
| difficult with just two people sometimes.
| balderdash wrote:
| I do think social media has something to do with it, but I
| think to me it's more the shortening of attention span e.g
| long form journalism -> tweet, Books -> TikTok's, I think
| people just actually struggle to contain themselves if
| someone is speaking for more than ~20 seconds
| pessimizer wrote:
| Very interesting, but there's no link or reference to a paper
| here, just
|
| > But his research has also explored how people act in smaller
| groups.
|
| My assumption is that Rhys Blakely was at Cheltenham Science
| Festival enjoying a lecture, and decided to fluff up a minute of
| it into an article. He seems to have quoted from one of Dunbar's
| popular science books; maybe he should have checked the footnotes
| or the bibliography?
|
| We're on the internet now, we don't have to "Authorities say..."
| anymore. This sounds interesting to me, but I don't want to look
| through every paper Dunbar has written to find it.
|
| -----
|
| edit: curiosity is annoying. I found this:
|
| Robin IM Dunbar, Neill DC Duncan, Daniel Nettle _" Size and
| structure of freely forming conversational groups"_ (1995)
|
| Abstract: Data from various settings suggest that there is an
| upper limit of about four on the number of individuals who can
| interact in spontaneous conversation. This limit appears to be a
| consequence of the mechanisms of speech production and detection.
| There appear to be no differences between men and women in this
| respect, other than those introduced by women's lighter voices.
|
| https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
|
| -----
|
| edit 2: and this:
|
| Guillaume Dezecache, R.I.M. Dunbar _" Sharing the joke: the size
| of natural laughter groups"_ (2012)
|
| > Our results confirm, with a considerably larger sample, the
| upper limit of N[?] 4 on conversation group size reported by
| Dunbar et al. (1995). In addition, they suggest that there is a
| similar limit on the number of individuals that can be involved
| in a laughter event.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.07.002
| didgetmaster wrote:
| When a group is small enough, people will often 'wait their turn'
| (i.e. wait until the current speaker is done saying something)
| before talking. Once a group gets a little bigger, two or more
| people will try to speak at the same time. This causes the
| discussion to split into separate groups, each carrying on a
| different conversation.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Conversations between four people very often devolve into two
| conversions between two people. The optimal number is either two
| or three.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Podcasts can illustrate some dynamics. The dominant format is two
| people. Three is rare. Four seems to work, but in a more shallow
| way. Five? Never heard one.
| m463 wrote:
| Someone I know goes to a moms group where they play this dice
| game called Bunco1 They've been playing it for 20 years.
|
| Tables of four people quickly form, play and move.
|
| The game is based on luck, not skill, so people are social not
| competitive. They're also concentrating on each other not so much
| the game.
|
| I got to attend it once and play, and found it to be an
| exceptional way to get to know absolutely everyone in the room.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunco
|
| "over 59 million women have played bunco and over 27 million play
| regularly"
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