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| Lucy with old friends |
LUCY BURDETTE: We had an interesting conversation in the comment section a couple of weeks ago about friends and decided it it was worth its own blog. Here’s the quote that started it, from Vox: "Humans have a limit on how many deep friendships they’re able to sustain. In the 1990s, evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar published a study claiming that humans can cognitively handle up to 150 meaningful social relationships (which includes family and friends) at any point, colloquially known as Dunbar’s Number. Not all 150 contacts are created equally, though. Out of dozens of connections, the number of close friendships people have, Dunbar found, is five. Similarly, a 2020 study found that having three to five close friends is enough to feel fulfilled."
I find that there are only a finite number of people that I can keep up with in a close way. Another article in Psych Central said that most people report having between three and nine close friends.
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| Lucy's oldest and dearest friend |
On the other hand, our Internet lives make all this more complicated. For example, look at Facebook: the number and photos of our “friends” are listed for everyone to see. Does it make you a better or more likable person if you have 3000 friends on Facebook versus 300? Can a person possibly keep up with 3000 friends? We adore our friends on Jungle Red Writers and count on all of you. But are new friends the same as friends we grew up with? The questions are endless.
The subject of friends is very important to the characters in my books, as well. In my upcoming contemporary fiction, THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS, each chapter begins with a quote that is taken from Cooper Hunziker‘s pop psych book on happiness. Here’s one from chapter twenty-two:
Dr Ed Diener’s research on teenagers found that students with the highest levels of happiness and the fewest signs of depression had strong ties to friends and family and a strong commitment to spending time with them. In other words, meaningful relationships change lives for the better.
From The Happiness Connection by Cooper Hunziker, PhD
Cooper knows how important happiness is, and that friendship is a big part of it, but she’s having difficulty with that in her own life. She’s just moved across the country, which means both her boyfriend and her best friend live in California to her New Haven. And who can she trust in her new job as assistant professor at Yale when everybody is scrambling for the same prestigious position? She envies what appears to be the easy warm friendship between the women in the happiness self-help group she is co-leading.
Hayley, Snow, on the other hand, food critic in the upcoming A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS, is much more settled. She loves her husband, she lives next-door to her best friend, she’s developed a warm friendship with her mother and stepfather. For her, friends are the staff of life, along with bread! A number of pre-publication reviews have mentioned that readers particularly love the friendships between Hayley, Miss Gloria, and the visiting Scottish scone sisters. I love this so much!
Over to you Reds, with lots of possible questions to discuss. Take your pick! What do you think about that 150 number of meaningful contacts we’re capable of? How about close friendships? The effects of Facebook and other social media? Can you think of books you loved because of their depiction of friendship?
