Sorry Taylor, Science Says You Can Only Have 5 BFFs At Once
Someone tell Taylor it could be time for a friendship cull [Photo: Instagram/taylorswift]
How big is your squad? If it’s anything like Taylor Swift’s you may have to do an edit as according to science we can only really have five besties at any one time.
A study by the MIT Technology Review looked at a theory by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar in the 90s, who spotted that there was a relationship between the size of people’s brains and how many friends they have. Basically the bigger your brain the bigger your social circle.
It’s all to do with the size of our neocortex you see. Humans, like apes, are allegedly limited in our friend-gathering dependent on how big this is. So, essentially, Dunbar believes humans can only handle five besties, 10 close pals, 35 acquaintances and 100 sort-of-knows on FB.
‘I wanna be in your gang’ Sorry science says no! [Photo: Instagram/taylorswift]
The science bod went on to test his theory by analysing six billion phone calls made by 35 million people from 2007 (way back when we all still used house phones) believing that the frequency of calls between two people is a measure of how strong or weak their relationship is.
The results proved that in fact Dunbar was probably onto something with participants generally maintaining connections with about four best friends, 11 close pals, nearly 30 acquaintances and almost 129 other sort-of-knows.
Wonder which one of Taylor’s crew is gonna be culled first?
How many friends are in your close circle? Let us know @YahooStyleUK
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