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Why are conversations limited to about four people?

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Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#41

Post by travisjungroth »

rebuilder wrote: post #17
sp332 wrote: post #4

Because otherwise you have to wait too long for your turn to speak, and you start whispering to the person next to you.

To emphasize the point, you end up needing to listen to other people instead of having other people listen to you. This is a big problem with discussions, the need to show your own worth easily overrides the value in having an actual discussion.

Another way of looking at it is if people aren't listening to you, it's not a discussion. I was at a small party a week ago, and all 12 people in the room listened to me tell a story. None of them interrupted and felt the need to show their worth. But, I wouldn't call that a discussion.

Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#42

Post by ItsMe000001 »

kragormonkey wrote: post #40
munificent wrote: post #28

I got halfway through, which I think gets you to the answer to the money question of what's special about four. Here's my attempt to summarize: There are bunch of possible reasons conversation size might be limited or optimal at certain numbers. They choose to focus on mentalizing -- your ability to maintain a mental model of another person. (I don't know if they have a strong claim for why they chose this.) One inte…

Paper seems paywalled. How are you reading this? Any mirror?

Did you try Sci-Hub? Always try Sci-Hub.

Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#43

Post by IncRnd »

miketery wrote: post #8
stephengillie wrote: post #3

I've always preferred groups of 2-6 people. Many board games are made for groups of this size. On one side, humans can mentally cope with 4-6 objects at most - as though we have 4-6 memory slots, which is reasonable given that we have 4 limbs. On another side, network effects of nodes on a grid become unmanageable above about 6 nodes - a group of 6 people will have 36 one-on-one interpersonal relationships to manage.

a group of 6 will have 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15.

It's directional. The calculation is 6x6 = 36.

The simplest example is with two people. John is a different person from Mary, so both John and Mary have a relationship with each other. 1x2 = 2 relationships.

Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#44

Post by hortonew »

bmm6o wrote: post #30
api_or_ipa wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On another side, network effects of nodes on a grid become unmanageable above about 6 nodes - a group of 6 people will have 36 one-on-one interpersonal relationships to manage. Network effects grow surprisingly fast. Between 2 people there's only 1 bidirectional edge. Between 3 it's 3 and between 4 it's 6. | people | edges | |--------|-------| | 2 | 1 | | 3 | 3 | | 4 | 6 | | 5 | 10 | Intuitively, this is important…

> this is important because in a conversation, each member must project and rationalise each other communicator's response to a message Do they, though? Maybe I participate in conversations differently, but trying to unravel how A interpreted B's comment is not something I would do.

It's all I do. It's the only way I can understand if my next comment will offend or work as a joke or if I'm posing an interesting topic. It's what makes conversations so draining to an introvert I feel. The more people, the more I have to figure out what I can say to be ok with the group at hand.

Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#45

Post by mattkrause »

jschwartzi wrote: post #32
jodrellblank wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you claiming? That in a picture with line graphs varying X, Y, people can't understand if the lines are different colours or the same colours (a third dimension)? That people can't play 3D games because they can't understand that the image is depicting length, width and depth? That people can't use windowing GUIs with overlapping windows, because they can't understand the Z-order of which window is "in front…

I think they're claiming that people have enormous amounts of trouble reasoning formally about graphs with 3 or more dimensions. Anecdotally this is bourne out by my experience, where it's easy to read an X-Y plot and speak to how the X value influences the Y value(EG linear, cubic, quartic, grows to infinity in one direction, etc). Add a third or 4th dimension and I start to have a lot of trouble making general stat…

There’s a confound here between an extra “spatial dimension” (x, y, z) and an extra “feature dimension” (x vs y for plain and star-bellied sneeches). Very few people have trouble with the latter, but the former is tricky to plot and interpret.

Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#47

Post by a_t48 »

IncRnd wrote: post #43
miketery wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a group of 6 will have 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15.

It's directional. The calculation is 6x6 = 36. The simplest example is with two people. John is a different person from Mary, so both John and Mary have a relationship with each other. 1x2 = 2 relationships.

Shouldn't that be 6x5=30? Unless you count everyone's relationship with themselves.... [this also aligns with the 5+4+3+2+1 version, it's just n*(n-1)/2 ]

Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#48

Post by winningcontinue »

jey wrote: post #10
oldmancoyote wrote: post #2

An abstract is to summarize the results of research not to tease the reader. That's why I flagged it.

Yeah, feels like the editors dropped the ball on that. Hopefully they'll fix it before the final version. Anyway, here's a link: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.09.004

thanks. was wondering how could something upvoted this high be behind a paywall without anyone asking for the paper itself. It's like people read the abstract and choose to discuss what they will.

Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#49

Post by jplayer01 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #36

We have the terms monologue and dialogue, but I'm not aware of words for 3 speakers or more specified by number. (They may exist, but presumably aren't in common usage.) So I'm a little surprised to learn that four-way conversations are a thing, actually. Or an important thing, I guess. Not that they exist per se, but that they are an important demarcation.

Four way conversations are only relevant as a concept in this case because of the effects on what would be considered a discussion at that number (or more) of participants.

Re: Why are conversations limited to about four people?

#50

Post by pizzazzaro »

stephengillie wrote: post #3

I've always preferred groups of 2-6 people. Many board games are made for groups of this size. On one side, humans can mentally cope with 4-6 objects at most - as though we have 4-6 memory slots, which is reasonable given that we have 4 limbs. On another side, network effects of nodes on a grid become unmanageable above about 6 nodes - a group of 6 people will have 36 one-on-one interpersonal relationships to manage.

Coincidentally, the idea of this natural conversational limit at Four surprises me. Sure, it is challenging, if you intend to participate (without just being a spectator). I'm used to Six as the described hard limit for this phenomenon.

The professor would then muse down a tangent about "six archetypal roles". But remembering this about human active memory and reasoning capabilities flushes things out a bit more.

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