Small World
Stanley Milgram described the familiar small world experience. The six degrees of separation between any two people has been adopted by the intelligentsia, and it has turned up in the media, movies and on Web sites.
The question of how people are interconnected had long been a diversion among mathematicians. If you randomly choose any two people in the world, how many acquaintances would be needed to link them?
It is just as likely, though, that Milgram was wrong. If we don't live in a small world after all, why do people find this idea so easy to believe? My research suggests that first, the belief that we live in a small world gives people a sense of security. And small-world experiences that we encounter naturally support religious faith as evidence of design.
There is also a difference between what we mean by a small-world experience and what mathematicians mean. We are not talking about the chances of connection between two people taken at random. We are talking about the chances of meeting a person who knows someone from our past. Over a lifetime, these chances are high, especially for educated people who travel in similar networks.
There is some evidence that Milgram might be right. Duncan Watts has created mathematical models that show how a small world could work.
Random connectors in a network, such as especially sociable people who have friends across subcultures, can vastly decrease the distance between points in a network.
This research has spurred interest in other fields such as disease transmission.
And when an especially unlikely connection occurs, the world does feel small, whether or not the scientific evidence agrees.
Psychology Today
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