It
really is a small world we live in
A variation of pass-the-parcel
suggests the ties that bind us are amazingly tight, says Richard
Wiseman
Most people have encountered the "small world" phenomenon - that
striking coincidence that emerges while chatting to a stranger
at a party when you discover that the two of you have a mutual
friend or acquaintance.
Many scientists now believe that almost any two strangers, selected
at random from anywhere in the world, may well be linked by an
amazingly small number of people - half a dozen or so.
We know that the internet, the brain, the web of reactions in
a living cell, power grids and the economy are other examples
of this connectedness. In short, scientists believe that we live
in a genuinely small world.
But what evidence is there to support this view? Not as much as
you might think, for an idea that has been around for decades.
To test the idea, and to see if some people live in smaller worlds
than others, I designed an experiment with The Daily Telegraph
and the Cheltenham Festival of Science, which begins today.
Working with the Telegraph's science editor, colleagues at the
festival and Dr Emma Greening of the University of Hertfordshire,
over the past few weeks I have conducted the first British experiment
to explore the phenomenon, one that is also relevant to a wider
programme of research that I am conducting on luck..
Our experiment was based on an ingenious study carried out in
the 1960s by American psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram sent
letters to just under 300 randomly selected people in Nebraska
and Kansas, asking them to help ensure that the letter made its
way to a "target person" - a named stockbroker in Boston.
Participants were asked not to send the letter directly to the
stockbroker. Instead, everyone was allowed to send it only to
someone whom they knew on first-name terms and who they thought
might know the stockbroker.
Twenty-nine per cent of the parcels eventually reached the stockbroker.
Amazingly, given the tens of millions of people in America, there
tended to be just six people linking the initial volunteer and
the target person - thus giving rise to the popular notion that
we are all maybe connected by just six degrees of separation.
Our experiment explored whether Milgram's findings withstand scrutiny
in modern Britain, with its population of about 60 million people.
Earlier this year, I published an article on Connected, inviting
readers who wished to participate to contact me.
More than 500 readers replied, a great response. One hundred were
randomly selected and were then sent a package containing postcards,
envelopes and instructions explaining that the purpose of the
experiment was to ensure that the parcel made its way to a certain
target person.
Rather than using a stockbroker in Boston, our target person was
Katie Smith, a 27-year-old events organiser working in Cheltenham.
Participants were simply told that Katie studied history of art
at Manchester University, once worked in public relations in London
and enjoys cycling.
As with Milgram's original study, all initial volunteers and subsequent
recipients were asked to send the parcel only to someone they
knew on first-name terms. Everyone was also asked to return one
of the postcards to us, so that we could track the packages as
they moved around the country.
Ten per cent of our parcels eventually
reached Katie. Amazingly, there tended to be just four people
linking our initial volunteers with Katie - two fewer than in
Milgram's experiment. Some of the chains in our study provide
striking illustrations of just how well-connected apparent strangers
actually are.
For example, one of our initial volunteers was Barry, a textile
agent from Stockport. Perhaps not surprisingly, Barry didn't know
Katie, and so sent the parcel to his friend Pat because she lives
close to Cheltenham Racecourse. But Pat didn't know Katie either.
However, she passed the parcel to her friend David because he
is chairman of the Cheltenham Festival of Science. Bingo! David
knows Katie and so was able to pass the package directly to her
and complete the chain.
The especially small number of people linking our volunteers to
Katie suggests that present-day Britain is indeed a much smaller
world than America in the Sixties. In addition, it supports the
idea that we may indeed all be linked to one another via a remarkably
small number of people. The experiment also explored whether certain
people might be especially well-connected. In January I published
The Luck Factor, a book summarising more than a decade of research
into why some people lead exceptionally lucky and unlucky lives.
This work revealed that lucky people frequently experience the
small-world phenomenon, and that such "lucky" meetings have a
dramatic and positive effect on their lives. In contrast, unlucky
people rarely report such experiences.
I speculated that lucky people report lots of small-world experiences
because they know a large number of people, and so are more likely
to be linked to the strangers they encounter. They are, without
realising it, making their own luck by developing lots of connections
with others, dramatically increasing their chances of having beneficial
small-world encounters.
To test this idea, I asked each volunteer to rate his or her general
level of luckiness prior to taking part in the study. We monitored
how many lucky and unlucky people actually sent on the package.
Approximately 20 did not send their parcels at all, guaranteeing
that their packages would never reach Katie. Interestingly, the
vast majority of these people had previously rated themselves
as unlucky.
We wanted to discover what lay behind such behaviour. These volunteers
had gone to considerable lengths to ensure that they participated
in the study, but had then dropped out at the very first stage.
We wrote to ask each why they had failed to send on the parcel.
Their replies were telling - most said they couldn't think of
anyone whom they knew on first-name terms and who could help deliver
the parcel to Katie.
Thus the lucky participants were far more likely to know potential
recipients for the parcels than unlucky people, so were far more
successful when it came to sending on their parcels. Indeed, all
of the people in the amazingly short chain started by Barry rated
themselves as very lucky.
These results provide support for the notion that lucky people
are living in a much smaller world than unlucky people and that
this, in turn, helps maximise their potential for "lucky" small-world
encounters in life.
Our study was the first British replication of Milgram's experiment.
The results suggest that the world has indeed become substantially
smaller over the past 40 years.
Perhaps, as a result of vast increases in electronic communication,
telephone networks and travel, we are all connected to one another
as never before. Maybe, on a social level, science and technology
have genuinely shrunk the world.
4 June
2003

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