How many people do you know actually

It is believed that people remember face faster than names, because visual information is perceived better than any other.

How many times have you looked at the man and frantically tried to remember his name?

But to give a numerical interpretation of the "better" still does not work: researchers could not determine how many individuals able to remember people. To be fair: create a test, the results of which would be reliable, very difficult.

Nice to meet you!

But there is work to determine what the person we are saved faster than others. Study, published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review in 1999, testifies: the person with whom people have seen before, it is better fixed in the memory. Not too surprising result, is not it?

On the other hand, if you look at the pictures (image above), which showed the subject, it seems strange that some could not remember even a single person.

In 2003, researchers from the University of Colorado found that there are some elements of the exterior, which contribute to memorize.

It turned out, we easily remember those who have closed their eyes, have bangs or facial hair, and more - the elderly.

Men's faces are remembered better than the female (maiden appearance participants somehow easily erased from memory).

What's in a name?

As for the name, everything becomes more difficult. Try for a moment to imagine yourself researcher. How to check how many names people remembers? Which test would come up to such a task? Asked to list all the names that will appear in the memory, it is possible, but then the participants in the experiment can hardly remember all the Mash and sing with whom he happened to meet on the street or a party.

Therefore, the majority of scientists are trying to focus on how many people (their appearance, names), you can recall at all. Some studies have shown some interesting results.

For example, in 1950 Itiel sociologists de Sola Pool (Ithiel de Sola Pool) and Manfred Kochen (Manfred Kochen) conducted the first study to measure the amount of Me. They tried to estimate how many people are in the social network of an individual. For this Poole carried a bookmark for 100 days. Every time he spoke (by telephone, in person or by mail) to someone whose name he knew, he said it in a notebook. Due to the fact that the names he wrote down only once, without duplicating, after some time, the list in his notebook began to rise slowly.

The data obtained by sociologists used to predict how much Me is at Pula in the future. In their opinion, in 20 years, a sociologist least 3 500 people learned.

It seems that it is too much. But in 1960, one of the students at MIT studied diary FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and calculated that the president had about 22,500 friends.

In 1961, the experience conducted by Poole, was repeated by Michael Gurevich (Michael Gurevich). Only the researcher asked acquaintances to follow the group of 27 subjects.

As it turned out, for 20 years, we have a plant in the middle 2130 Me.

Of course, love to write - not the same thing as the mind of every person. Poole also thought about it and wanted to check how many people he can remember. He did this by using a phone book as hints. The researchers chose 60 random pages and view collected on them the names, trying to remember people with similar or the same names. In the end he was able to recall more than 7 000 people.

On the one hand, it's cool. On the other - you hardly ever need to remember all the people you meet along the way. What you need to do is to remember the names of those with whom you are communicating with whom you cooperate and you contact constantly.

To do this, you should use the recommendations of the University of Kansas professor Richard Harris (Richard Harris). to better remember, The name of the person you need to:

1. Several times to repeat his name during the first conversation.
2. Sincerely interested in new acquaintance.

But perhaps there are people that you would like to forget, simply because the information you do not need. For example, I remember very well the person of Benedict Cumberbatch (Benedict Cumberbatch), regardless of whether I want it or not. Should I worry about this?

Much as we can the necessary and important people to remember

Robin Dunbar (Robin Dunbar), a professor of evolutionary psychology, studied primates and the size of their social groups. He wanted to know how many links are capable of supporting a monkey. It turned out that the toque macaque friends with 17 relatives and Uakari only four. To examine the relationship of the data and the size of the brain of primates, Dunbar suggested that people are able to support about 150 links.

To test his conclusion, Robin Dunbar studied modern hunter-gatherers who live in clans. It turned out that the most productive clans consist of 100-200 (which is pretty darn close to the result obtained by the professor). It is in these groups of people interact on a regular basis, build strong social ties based on directly knowledge of each other.

Dunbar confirmed its finding another simple fact: on Christmas Day US residents send out an average of 153 cards.

Apparently, there is a cognitive limit to the number of persons with whom we can maintain stable relationships.

In general, without being told you can remember appearance and the names of about 150 people. The rest have to remember familiar with the work and the correct stimulation of memory.