In a personal communication, Gerald Suttles has suggested that the "average individual" might well be able to recognize as many as several thousand persons. However, social groupings must be engineered such that "the least clever at recognition can also negotiate in a known social world." Consequently, the actual size of extant personal worlds may be poor indicators of the human capacity for personal knowing.

XREF: Relates to Dunbar's number and social brain hypothesis research on the cognitive limits of social group size.

XREF: Connects to Dunbar's number and social brain hypothesis literature on group size limits.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 1057