[Book Sip] Scientific Analysis of Friends and Friendship 'Friends'

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of the book itself, while others instantly reach the reader's heart, creating a connection with the book. Here, we introduce such meaningful sentences excerpted from the book. - Editor's note

This is a new work by Robin Dunbar, a leading authority in sociality research and widely known for the 'Dunbar's number,' a professor at Oxford University. It fascinatingly explores why we make friends, how friendships begin and end, with whom we become friends, how many friends we can have, how our brain manages friendships, and above all, why friendship is important. It provides the most scientific answers to 'everything we want to know about friendship.'

Time is a limited resource, and the time we can spend on social interactions follows the zero-sum rule. Time given to one friend cannot be given to another. According to what we have learned from studies on monkeys and humans, the quality of friendship directly depends on the time invested in the relationship with that person.

To handle social complexity, we need a special ability: the ability to read and understand others' minds. This ability, called mind-reading or mentalizing, exists only in humans. Some intelligent species among monkeys and apes also show elements of this ability, and their brains have neural circuits underlying this ability, but only humans use language, create fictional stories, and understand complex concepts like religion and science.

Digital media, including Facebook, may help maintain friendships when we cannot easily meet people. However, in my view, what digital media does is merely slow down the natural fading of friendships when they are not continuously reinforced. Ultimately, unless the relationship is truly close, nothing in the digital world can prevent the quiet transition of that friendship into just an acquaintance (someone known in the past).

Friends | Written by Robin Dunbar | Translated by An Jin-i | Across | 22,000 KRW