Humans can personally recognize several thousand people but design groups for the least capable.

Evidence

In part, this variation in capacity may be due to basic differences in memory abilities. In part, it is probably also due to differences in motivation. For many reasons, an individual can come to consider it extremely important to know large numbers of people. To the degree that this is important to him, his “capacity” is thereby increased. 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. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1057

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Dunbar’s number debates and to Lofland’s broader account of how collectivity structure accommodates cognitive limits. — connects to: Societal tasks should be handled by the smallest capable group — Laura Albareda and Alejo Jose G. Sison, Commons Organizing: Embedding Common…, 88; People mostly fail to understand how their own institutions work. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 1046
• QUESTION: What empirical basis exists for Suttles’s several-thousand-person figure, and how does it relate to Dunbar’s number?