English

Intelligence of small groups

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems 2019-10-11 v3

Abstract

Dunbar hypothesized that 150150 is the maximal number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. We explain this effect as being a consequence of a process of self-organization between NN units leading their social system to the edge of phase transition, usually termed criticality. Criticality generates events, with an inter-event time interval distribution characterized by an inverse power law (IPL) index μS<2\mu_{S}<2. These events break ergodicity and we refer to them as crucial events. The group makes decisions and the time persistence of each decision is given by another IPL distribution with IPL index μR\mu_{R}, which is different from μS\mu_{S} if N150N\neq 150. We prove that when the number of interacting individuals is equal to 150150, these two different IPL indexes become identical, with the effect of generating the Kardar Parisi Zhang (KPZ) scaling δ=1/3\delta =1/3. We argue this to be an enhanced form of intelligence, which generates efficient information transmission within the group. We prove the inflrmation transmission efficiency is maximal when N=150N=150, the Dunbar number.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.11051,
  title  = {Intelligence of small groups},
  author = {Giovanni Francesco Massari and Garland Culbreth and Roberto Failla and Mauro Bologna and Bruce J. West and Paolo Grigolini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.11051},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Main text 5 pages with 4 figures; supplementary material 7 pages with 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:24:35.948Z