It’s a small world, isn’t it?’ we say to each other when we discover a personal connection with someone who lives miles away from us. In one of his many innovative studies, Stanley Milgram set out to test this idea (1967). He asked some people from Kansas (in the midwest of the USA) to send packages to a stranger in Massachusetts, on the east coast several thousand miles away. The senders were told the stranger’s name, occupation and roughly where they lived. They were told to send the package to someone they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out of all their friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally delivered to its target.
Milgram reported the results enthusiastically but also selectively. One of the packages got through in 4 days but it was one of the few that did. Most didn’t make it, but the ones that were successful were able to get there in about six hops. This led to the famous phrase ‘six degrees of separation’ which commonly appears in writings on the experience of urban life. It suggests that any two people in the world can be connected by an average of six acquaintances. It is a delightful idea and may well be right, but Milgram did not find clear evidence to support this.
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