The Small World Experiment
The Small World Experiment, conducted by sociologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, investigates social connectivity. It revealed that people in the U.S. are, on average, connected through just six degrees of separation. This means you can reach someone across the globe through a chain of acquaintances, with each link being a person you know. The experiment involved sending letters to a target person through acquaintances, demonstrating how interconnected human networks are. This concept has since influenced understanding in fields like sociology, psychology, and network theory, highlighting the unexpected closeness of social ties in our increasingly global society.
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The Small-World Experiment, famously conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, explores how closely people are connected in social networks. Milgram asked participants to send a letter to a stranger through acquaintances, aiming to see how many connections it would take. He found that, on average, it took about six steps, leading to the idea that "six degrees of separation" exist between any two people. This suggests that even in large social networks, individuals are surprisingly close to each other, highlighting the interconnectedness of human relationships across the globe.