Unveiling the Theory
In the vast landscape of social connections, the concept of “Six Degrees of Separation” has woven an intricate web, suggesting that everyone and everything is merely six or fewer degrees away from each other. This theory, rooted in the work of Stanley Milgram, a renowned social psychologist, emerged from his groundbreaking experiments on obedience conducted at Yale in the 1960s.
Milgram’s Memory Test
Milgram’s experiments involved a unique “memory test,” where participants delivered electric shocks of increasing intensities. Notably, in 1967, he coined the phrase “6 degrees of separation” after conducting his Small World Experiment, which demonstrated the world-shrinking effect of growing social networks.
Small World Experiment
The Small World Experiment aimed to measure the number of steps it took for a package to travel from the West Coast to a stockbroker in Boston. The intriguing finding? Merely six steps on average. Fast forward to the 21st century, where the landscape of social connections has been reshaped by the dominance of social networking sites.
