Robin Dunbar

Evolutionary psychologist and world expert on friendship Professor Robin Dunbar explains how science is making the value of friendship clearer than it has ever been.

Dunbar says friends matter to us more than we think. Science shows the number and quality of our friends has a bigger impact on our happiness and health than anything else. Friends can impact the likelihood of your child getting ill or even dying.

Dunbar is professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. He has given his name to Dunbar’s Number, a basic principle of relationships that suggests a limit on how many friends we can legitimately have.