Abstract
Conversations are ubiquitous and central elements of daily life. Yet a fundamental feature of conversation remains a mystery: It is genuinely difficult to maintain an everyday conversation with more than four speakers. Why? We introduce a “mentalizing explanation” for the conversation size constraint, which suggests that humans have a natural limit on their ability to model the minds of others, and that this limit, in turn, shapes the sizes of everyday conversations. Using established methodologies for investigating conversation size, we pit this mentalizing hypothesis against two competing explanations—that the size of a conversation is limited by a short-term memory capacity (limiting the factual information we process) or by an auditory constraint (speakers need to be able to hear what each other are saying)—in conversations drawn from a real-world college campus and from Shakespearean plays. Our results provide support for the mentalizing hypothesis and also render alternative accounts less plausible.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 423-428 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Evolution and Human Behavior |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 1 2016 |
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Keywords
- Communication
- Group size
- Language
- Mentalizing
- Social brain
- Theory of mind
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Cite this
Something to talk about : are conversation sizes constrained by mental modeling abilities? / Krems, Jaimie Arona; Dunbar, Robin I M; Neuberg, Steven.
In: Evolution and Human Behavior, Vol. 37, No. 6, 01.11.2016, p. 423-428.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Something to talk about
T2 - are conversation sizes constrained by mental modeling abilities?
AU - Krems, Jaimie Arona
AU - Dunbar, Robin I M
AU - Neuberg, Steven
PY - 2016/11/1
Y1 - 2016/11/1
N2 - Conversations are ubiquitous and central elements of daily life. Yet a fundamental feature of conversation remains a mystery: It is genuinely difficult to maintain an everyday conversation with more than four speakers. Why? We introduce a “mentalizing explanation” for the conversation size constraint, which suggests that humans have a natural limit on their ability to model the minds of others, and that this limit, in turn, shapes the sizes of everyday conversations. Using established methodologies for investigating conversation size, we pit this mentalizing hypothesis against two competing explanations—that the size of a conversation is limited by a short-term memory capacity (limiting the factual information we process) or by an auditory constraint (speakers need to be able to hear what each other are saying)—in conversations drawn from a real-world college campus and from Shakespearean plays. Our results provide support for the mentalizing hypothesis and also render alternative accounts less plausible.
AB - Conversations are ubiquitous and central elements of daily life. Yet a fundamental feature of conversation remains a mystery: It is genuinely difficult to maintain an everyday conversation with more than four speakers. Why? We introduce a “mentalizing explanation” for the conversation size constraint, which suggests that humans have a natural limit on their ability to model the minds of others, and that this limit, in turn, shapes the sizes of everyday conversations. Using established methodologies for investigating conversation size, we pit this mentalizing hypothesis against two competing explanations—that the size of a conversation is limited by a short-term memory capacity (limiting the factual information we process) or by an auditory constraint (speakers need to be able to hear what each other are saying)—in conversations drawn from a real-world college campus and from Shakespearean plays. Our results provide support for the mentalizing hypothesis and also render alternative accounts less plausible.
KW - Communication
KW - Group size
KW - Language
KW - Mentalizing
KW - Social brain
KW - Theory of mind
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84992431339&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84992431339&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2016.05.005
DO - 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2016.05.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84992431339
VL - 37
SP - 423
EP - 428
JO - Evolution and Human Behavior
JF - Evolution and Human Behavior
SN - 1090-5138
IS - 6
ER -