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The world is a small place but are we somehow linked to everyone else on planet Earth? Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, was one of the first to test the ‘small world’ phenomenon. He questioned how many acquaintances it would take to create a chain that could link any two people. His work led to the concept of ‘six degrees of separation’. Duncan Watts studied the phenomenon more recently, using 60 000, people in his study that utilised email.

Stanley Milgram’s six degrees of separation

Stanley Milgram’s ambitious project to find out how many acquaintances it takes to link any two people involved a study of 145 people in Kansas. These people were asked to contact the wife of a particular divinity student in Cambridge. They were given her name and address and their mission was to pass a folder on to her.

The catch was that they were not permitted to contact the subject directly. Nor were they allowed to send the folder to her directly. They were told to send the folder to somebody who knew the woman on a first term basis. This meant that they could send the folder to somebody close to the target, who was to pass it on. The woman received the folder four days later.

Milgram found that the average number of steps was five to six, which led to the phrase ‘six degrees of separation’. Not all of the chains worked out so easily though. The follow-up study showed an average of five to seven steps but it revealed that only 44 of the 170 chains were completed.

Duncan Watt’s more recent study

Duncan Watts’ experiment, which enlisted the help of 60,000 people, proved that six-degrees of separation existed. The chain was only completed 384 times however and when it was, it was because people were able to reach others who were similar to themselves. In this case, college-educated people found it easier to reach a professor than a vet or a policeman.

It seems that the world becomes especially small when people of similar backgrounds are involved.

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