A Degree of Separation

As I began studying for my my Psych 280 (Social Psychology) final, I came across something very interesting.  It involved what psychologists call the mere exposure effect.  This term, which is defined by my textbook as a finding that the more exposure we have to a stimulus, the more apt we are to like it, relates to the lecture we were given be Mark Newman about networks.  As I read further into my textbook, it discussed how we can get to know people who are very far away physically but very close in cyber-space.

This whole idea of connecting to people in cyber-space is a completely new revelation to our generation.  Never before did people have the opportunity to communicate so easily with one another, let alone connect with so many people.  As I continued to read about this phenomenon, I decided to do some research on my own to what I could find.  I found one very interesting article from the Washington Post discussing some research done by Microsoft in 2006.  Researchers at Microsoft recorded 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people on all of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging networks from around the world.  From this they concluded that the average two people are distanced by 6.6 degrees of separation. 

While most people already know this, as Mark Newman told us there are six degrees of separation between ourselves and anyone else, there is something more interesting about this finding.  What the researchers concluded here was that is basically a "connectivity constant for humanity" and this number is 6.6.  Just like any other constant that we use (pi, the speed of light, etc.), this is something that is just as fixed. 

After doing this I decided to see what kind of games there were out there to play to see the connections between people.  I found a fun website called "The Oracle of Bacon".  This website allows you to type in any famous actors or actresses and it will show you their connection.  With the first one I typed in, I found a pretty close connection:

As I played around a little more, I started to create a game with myself.  I tried hundreds of combinations to try and find one that was "6 degrees" apart.  After playing for about 15 minutes, I could not find anything more than 3 degrees away.  This makes more sense as the movie industry is a lot more connected than the average human.

Overall, it is very interesting to see how far the internet can take us these days.  When thinking about the amount of Facebook friends you have, and how many friends they have, and how many each of their friends have, the list just goes on an on.  Especially now, when we are all at a time in our lives where social networking plays such a prominent role in how we communicate with one another.  I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is definitely something that is extremely prevalent.  What do you think? Do you think that we are too reliant on social media these days?