Six degrees of separation - Unit 4

C2 Proficiency · Multiple Choice Reading · Close-up C2, National Geographic Learning

You are going to read an article about a theory. For questions 1–6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

A friend of a friend ... We've all said it or something similar. These words reveal our connection to a whole host of other people beyond our immediate social circles. Theoretically then, it should be possible for us to connect to any individual in the world. The question is, how many links in the chain would it take to connect you to, say, a Nepalese goatherd, a Kenyan coffee grower, a world leader, or a software billionaire? A hundred? A thousand? 'Not many' is the answer according to the 'six degrees of separation' theory. It's the idea that anyone in the world can be connected to any other person through a chain of acquaintances in six steps or fewer. I'm speaking with Evan Hardy, a network theory expert, who comments, 'Conceivably, the Queen of England is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine.' The notion is mind-boggling and I begin to entertain thoughts that the President of the United States could be my friend's sister's boyfriend's teacher's cousin's former classmate. While it's fun to speculate about connections to the great and the good, or indeed to anyone across class, race, economics or geography, the theory, Hardy points out, is infinitely more important than its 'Wow!' factor suggests. First proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer, Frigyes Karinthy, in a short story called Chains, the theory has fascinated people for nearly a century. To the man in the street, it confirms what we already knew intuitively – that it really is a small world. For mathematicians and sociologists, it has laid the foundation for network theory and the new discipline of network science. But to be a true science, it has to stand up to empirical testing. This wasn't done until the 1960s, when Harvard professor, Stanley Milgram, devised a way to do so. Hardy explains, 'It was quite clever. He randomly selected people to send a package to the same "target" – someone they didn't know. They couldn't do it directly, only via someone they knew on a first-name basis, who in turn forwarded it on to someone in their network, and so on until the package was finally delivered.' Expecting the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, the participants were amazed to discover it had only taken between five and seven links to achieve the objective. Milgram's findings inspired the phrase 'six degrees of separation' and it was popularised in the title of a play. The findings were later dismissed, Hardy informs me, because his conclusion was based on a small number of packages. In science, you need large samples to back up your findings. Despite this, six degrees of separation gained acceptance in pop culture when the parlour game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon caught on. The game requires players to link other actors to Bacon, in a maximum of six films. Bacon has since revealed he initially thought the game was a huge joke at his expense, and that strangers would approach, touch him and say, 'I'm one degree!' This unlikely phenomenon among film fans led to the launch, in 1997, of a website called SixDegrees.com – the precursor to Facebook and Twitter, and to all intents and purposes, the first social networking site. Variations on Milgram's method to test the theory continued. In 2001, thousands of participants had to connect to a random person via e-mail by creating a human chain. Once analysed, the data revealed there were six degrees of separation. Microsoft used an enormous database of 30 billion instant messages in 2008. They found that a slightly higher average of 6.6 links were required to connect two people. According to Hardy, 'A constant was emerging and researchers were keen to know if the phenomenon was applicable outside of the social networking world.' It turns out that it is. Hardy elaborates, 'Network theory can examine serious problems like disease transmission, and how financial markets or power grids fail – anything, in fact, with steps or components. It can even help us to understand how ideas spread or how fads catch on. Consider a successful product. You think it owes its popularity to some inherent quality. But as a network theorist, I say success is driven by a type of social chain reaction where more and more people buy a product because other people are buying it. It's the herd mentality.' Armed with this knowledge, advertisers use social networks to promote products in viral marketing campaigns. 'The beauty of network theory,' explains Hardy, 'is that it could allow us to pinpoint the weakest link, the part of the network most vulnerable to marketing and most likely to spread the word. Once the "right" kind of people are targeted, a product can take off.' Intrigued, I ask Hardy how this advertiser's dream demographic can be identified out of the billions of people online. 'Every click, every like, every comment you make and every connection you have is used by your social networking site to build up a profile that's sold to the brands. You've become a commodity,' he replies, a bit too cheerily for my liking. And with that answer, all the fun of six degrees is gone, to be replaced by a stark and unwelcome reality; in our increasing online connectedness, I am a product and no longer a person.

Our closest friends are in our immediate social circles.

We are not as removed from each other as we think.

Every individual shares the same social connections.

Some people have more unlikely connections than others.

What claim does the writer make about social connections in the first paragraph?

popular figures

powerful leaders

important people

friendly individuals

In line 25, what does the great and the good mean?

It had its own dedicated website.

The results can be applied to films.

It became the subject of a popular play.

The scientific community rejected the conclusion.

What is true about Stanley Milgram's experiment?

They supported Milgram's six degrees theory.

The results of the experiments were exactly the same.

They generated greater interest in Milgram's study.

The human chains needed to connect two people were longer.

Available as a free printable PDF worksheet with an optional answer key.

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