Robin Dunbar

Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist specializing in primate behavior. Dunbar leads the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is recognized for formulating Dunbar's number, which refers to the cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom a person can maintain stable relationships--which is averaged at 150.

Dunbar's research focuses on understanding the behavioral, cognitive, and neuroendocrinological mechanisms underlying social bonding in primates and humans. His work explores how these mechanisms enable humans to form large-scale societies, despite being evolutionarily adapted for small-scale social groups. This research has implications for the design of social networking sites and mobile technology. Dunbar employs behavioral and cognitive experimental approaches, network analysis, agent-based modeling, comparative studies of primate brain evolution, neuroimaging, and neuroendocrinology to investigate social processes at both the dyadic and group levels.

Dunbar has received the Huxley Memorial Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for contributions to anthropology. He is also a Humanists UK Distinguished Supporter of Humanism.

Dunbar was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and philosophy. He completed his PhD at the University of Bristol, focusing on the social organization of the gelada, Theropithecus gelada, a monkey closely related to baboons. Dunbar has held academic positions at University of Liverpool and University of Oxford, including serving as director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology.