囧研究 人這輩子的親密朋友只有5個

You might not have as many close friends as you think. Researchers have provided new evidence that lends weight to a theory that says you can only maintain five close friendships.

你的親密朋友也許沒有你想的那麼多。研究員提供的新證據強調了一種觀點，你只能維護好與5個人的親密友誼。

You’ve probably heard of Dunbar’s Number which suggests that human beings can only maintain meaningful relationships with between 100 to 230 other people, and that number is typically 150. It’s been demonstrated to hold true in all kinds of situations—from ancient armies to big business.

你可能聽說過鄧巴數，它指出人只能與其他100~230個人維持有意義的人際關係，而且這個數字通常是150。從古代軍隊到財團，各種情況都證明它是有效的。

But you might not know that Robin Dunbar, the anthropologist behind the number, has since also suggested that those relationships are layered, like an onion. He argues that people typically have five ultra-close relationships, then 10 slightly less cozy companions, 35 at more distance, and then 100 in an outer circle. Now he and follow researchers have published data that appears to lend weight to the theory.

但是你也許不知道這個數字背後的人類學家羅賓·鄧巴，他後來也指出，人際關係就像洋蔥一樣，是分層的。他表示人們通常有5個非常親密的朋友，10個稍微不那麼默契的朋友，35個有些距離的朋友，然後是100個自己圈子以外的朋友。如今他和追隨他的研究員公佈了那些看上去似乎強調了該觀點的數據。

The remaining data was then clustered, to sort out whether there was layering in friendship closeness, where closeness was measured by the frequency of calls between two individuals. Turns out that the clusters shape up rather similarly to Dunbar’s suggestions, with 4.1 in the first layer, 6.9 in the next, then 18.8, and finally 99.1. The results are published on arXiv.

此外，剩餘的數據是成串的，要整理出親密友誼是否分層，而親密度是通過衡量兩個人之間通電話的頻率來得出的。結果發現，這串數據發展成鄧巴觀點，更確切的說，與鄧巴觀點相似，4.1在第一層，6.9在下一層，然後再下一層是18.8，最後一層是99.1。這個研究結果被髮表在arXiv上。