Beyond Dunbar circles: a continuous description of social relationships and resource allocation.

ABSTRACT: We discuss the structure of human relationship patterns in terms of a new formalism that allows to study resource allocation problems where the cost of the resource may take continuous values. This is in contrast with the main focus of previous studies where relationships were classified in a few, discrete layers (known as Dunbar's circles) with the cost being the same within each layer. We show that with our continuum approach we can identify a parameter [Formula: see text] that is the equivalent of the ratio of relationships between adjacent circles in the discrete case, with a value [Formula: see text]. We confirm this prediction using three different datasets coming from phone records, face-to-face contacts, and interactions in Facebook. As the sample size increases, the distributions

SUBMITTER: Tamarit I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8831677 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature