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Artigos etiquetados “robin dunbar

Switch Off

Publicado em 08/08/2021

(…) falling in love, or just become besotted with anyone or anything (including your pet dog), seem to switch off the rational capacities of the brain that would normally allow us to evaluate other people and situations more critically and sceptically. Of course, this makes it possible for us to give ourselves wholly and unstintingly to the object of our affections without being too shy and retiring or too critical of their behaviour. In a word, your rational thinking centres are being deliberately switched off so that you don’t ask too many questions and give up to early.

—Robin Dunbar, Friends, Little Brown, 2021

It’s Not What You Say But the Way That You Say It

Publicado em 25/07/2021

When all is said and done, however, the words we use are only a small part of the equation (…)
How you say something can totally change the meaning of the words you utter. It’s the difference in intonation between ‘That’s really nice!’ (meaning thanks a million) and ‘That’s really nice!’ (meaning why did you treat me so badly?).

—Robin Dunbar, Friends, Little Brown, 2021

Day After Day

Publicado em 24/07/2021

People who averaged only thirty hours together over nine weeks (the equivalent of just 15 minutes a day) remained acquaintances. To move from being a casual friend to a meaningful friend called for another fifty hours spent together over the course of three months, while those who advanced to be best friends took another 100 hours to be spent together. In effect, to make it into the most intimate category of friendship required something close to two hours a day to be devoted to the friend, day after day, for some considerable time. Friendship does not come cheap.

—Robin Dunbar, Friends, Little Brown, 2021

The Same

Publicado em 21/06/2021

No relationship we enter into ever has quite the intensity of romance. It is weird and wonderful thing that has haunted poets, philosophers, kings and queens and the humblest citizens in every age. As thought from nowhere the whole body changes, the mind grows besotted and no longer the master of its on destiny. The signs are unmistakable: a dreaminess of demeanour, a constant desire to be with the beloved, a willingness to oblige their every whim, and a near complete indifference to everyone and everything else. To be sure, not everyone suffers the full rigours of the condition, but it is general enough and (occasional denials notwithstanding) sufficiently cross-cultural to count among the handful of human universals in addition to laughter and tears. Peculiar of they are, romantic relationships share with friendships the same processes of evaluation and assessment, the same dependence of trust, the same fragility when exposed to being let down, the same risk of abandonment when somebody better comes along.

—Robin Dunbar, Friends, Little Brown, 2021