You have heard about the theory of 6 handshakes. Does the rule of six handshakes work: my experiment. Theory doesn't always work

Malcolm Glaudell, a Canadian journalist and author of books on popular psychology and sociology, calls these people "unifiers" and argues that most social connections are possible because of them - people with a very wide circle of acquaintances. Roughly speaking, not every person "A" is connected with any other person "B" through six methods, but there are several unifiers with a huge number of contacts, which through a small number of handshakes are connected to each other and to "ordinary" people like the notorious "A" and "B". By the way, in this age of the Internet, when many people have a habit of keeping acquaintances with hated familiar people through social networks, these chains of handshakes can be even shorter.

Let's return to our assumptions at the beginning of the article. Acquaintance with the French President - a joke? Not really. Another joke about any of us meeting the Queen of England in five steps came from Microsoft's data analysis of more than 240 million users. The number of “handshakes” identified in their study between any “A” and any “B” is 6.6. Another experiment - Facebook - determined this figure at 4.74.

Australian farmer? And again, not a joke. In 2012, Columbia Magazine published an article about a study by Colombian scientists who invited volunteers to find a person anywhere in the world by name, place of residence and profession using e-mail. In the course of this experiment, an Australian resident “found” an addressee from Siberia in just four messages.

Well, okay, with a peasant from Nicaragua, it may not be so easy. After all, the number of handshakes, be it four, five, or six and a half, is the average. Nevertheless, the very possibility of such (any!) acquaintance in our "close" world, you see, is exciting.

Greetings to my dear readers and subscribers! Today I decided to take a little break from purely financial publications and relax my brain.

In the world there are a huge number of interesting theories, studies, teachings. Take, for example, the rule of six handshakes - have you ever heard of it?

At one time, it struck me with its simplicity and indisputability. I read several materials on this topic, and then I decided to check how it works myself. But let's talk about everything in order.

Each of us knows the saying “how small the world is”, which says that in the most remote places you can meet your former colleague, classmate and just an acquaintance. But, at first glance, this is an ordinary coincidence, and nothing more. But there is an evidence base that suggests that we are familiar with any person living on our planet through a chain of no more than 5 acquaintances.

First, this theory gained fame at the beginning of the 20th century, after the publication of the story “Links of the Chain”, written by the Hungarian writer F. Karinti. In it, he demonstrated in a playful way that each of us can be familiar with absolutely any other person, regardless of whether he is a famous person or an ordinary individual.

In subsequent years, many scientists and amateurs have repeatedly set up experiments to confirm or refute this rule. For example, residents of American cities were given the task of using this system to find a person from another city whose mailing address was unknown to the participants. Each of them wrote a letter, which was then passed on to some acquaintance, and so on.

The chain was tracked, because all participants added their contact details. All the experiments that were carried out at that time and much later proved that the hypothesis was absolutely correct.

Confirmation of the “6 handshakes” rule with modern technologies

Further - more: with the development of technology, scientists were able to calculate this algorithm mathematically. One of the large-scale studies was carried out on a grand scale in 2006 by Microsoft employees. They processed billions of messages sent by users within a month. It turned out that the average distance between 2 users was 6.6.

As soon as the Internet became a widespread phenomenon, the principle of accessibility of any user became even more obvious and easily proven, thanks to VK, FaceBook, LiveJournal and other resources that unite people from various remote corners of the globe.

Today, there are even services that help establish a chain from one user to another. The possibilities of global communication are being explored by a variety of networking projects and applications.

How to test a hypothesis in social networks

This theory is not as easy to understand as it might seem at first glance. But social networks, for example, VKontakte, will clearly help to demonstrate it. In any case, the following algorithm helped me personally:

  1. We select in the search for people any person you do not know (for this, enter the name and surname that come to mind)
  2. From the drop-down list of candidates, you can, without hesitation, choose the one who lives in another city, and even better in another country
  3. We go to his page, to his list of friends and select the first one on the list
  4. Now we visit the page of this first one on the list and look at his friends, and again select the very first
  5. We repeat this operation up to 5-6 times. But personally, I already found my acquaintances on the 3rd person

Thus, the rule shows that I was acquainted with a girl who lives thousands of kilometers away from me and whom I have never heard anything about, through an indirect chain of my acquaintances.

Pros and cons of the 6 handshake idea

Are there any limitations to this seemingly sinless theory? Of course, since a few centuries ago humanity was not so monolithic and did not have such opportunities for movement.

In fact, the 6 handshake rule does not automatically mean that each of us can be familiar with the Queen of England or the Sultan of Brunei. People tend to form communities according to some limited characteristics, for example, by age, by thematic interests, and so on. The boundaries of each circle of acquaintances are detected after 2-3 levels.

The idea, which is similar to the hypothesis of 6 handshakes, is revealed by the kind and touching film "Christmas Trees". In it, the action takes place in various Russian cities, each of which is in its own time zone. People along the chain convey the request of the child, who can be personally helped by the president, but no one knows him personally.

That's such an interesting rule, friends, we met today, and the progress that accompanies us only confirms it. People are becoming more and more communicative thanks to social networks, online conferences and other ways and mechanisms of communication. Subscribe to blog updates, and we will continue to discuss useful and exciting events. Bye!

Surely many have heard about the theory of six handshakes. Some even call it a “rule”, however, quite rightly believing that the scheme really works. The essence of the theory boils down to the fact that any two people are connected by no more than six “handshakes”. Everything is like in Breaking Bad: a lawyer knows a guy who knows a guy who knows who is needed.

Life in its many manifestations has already managed to prove that the theory works. Therefore, it makes no sense to confirm it once again. In this material, I want to demonstrate how close we are to each other in general! It turns out, so much so that sometimes two handshakes are enough to contact the person you are looking for on another continent!

A bit of history...

The six handshake theory was formulated back in 1969 by American psychologists Stanley Milgram and Jeffrey Travers. Their hypothesis was about five levels of mutual acquaintances, but today we know this theory as the implementation of these levels in the form of six “handshakes”. By which, obviously, any informational connection is understood: a request, a request, and anything in general, just to get “access” to the desired link in the chain.

In their results, the researchers proceeded from the data of the experiment, during which 60 out of 300 envelopes distributed to participants reached unfamiliar addressees in another city. Moreover, each envelope that reached the goal passed through five people. Therefore, the theory was called "six handshakes". But it is obvious that in the modern world the number of mutual acquaintances to the right person can be much smaller. Especially in connection with our private public in terms of social networks.

… theories

With the advent of social networks, by the way, a new round of research into the interconnectedness of people in the world has become possible. In 2011, scientists from the University of Milan conducted a study based on Facebook and found that users of the network are separated from each other by an average of 4.74 levels of communication. That is, the theory of six handshakes was not only proved mathematically (thus becoming the rule, at least for Facebook), but also showed that it takes a little less than 6 handshakes to connect two people on the planet.

…and practices

Another interesting fact is that people search on social networks is usually configured in such a way as to show the people closest to us. We are talking, for example, about showing the friends of a randomly selected user: among the first people with whom you personally know the most will be shown. This algorithm brought to life a new entertainment that allows you to see in practice the rule of six handshakes in action. Surely many of you have already heard about this “game”, for the rest I will list the necessary steps.

1. Search for any person who is not your friend. First and last name can be arbitrary. You can also click on the avatar of any random user. Or choose the candidate you like by filtering by city or country.

2. Go to the list of friends of the selected "victim". Common friends you have with this person may already be highlighted at this stage, and in this case, the number of handshakes between you is equal to one through any mutual acquaintance. If this does not happen, go to the page of the first (topmost) in the friend list.

3. Go to the page of the first friend each time until you see mutual friends. As a rule, this will happen much faster than after five transitions through acquaintances of acquaintances. Just count the number of steps, and exactly so many “handshakes” separate you from the initially selected person.

You will probably be amazed at how quickly mutual acquaintances will appear between you and a random social network user from Vladivostok, or Yekaterinburg, or Switzerland, or Australia - it doesn’t matter! Having learned about this “game”, I got so used to the “quick” result that I got fed up after a few “games”. Until, finally, I realized that you need to look for common acquaintances not for unknown, random people, but for celebrities! So I decided to calculate how many handshakes separate me from Putin!

Medvedev+1

Yes, at least one handshake from


The theory of six handshakes means that each of us knows any person on Earth through five common acquaintances.

This theory was put forward in 1969 by two American psychologists: Stanley Milgram and Geoffrey Travers. The hypothesis they proposed was that each person is indirectly acquainted with any other inhabitant of the planet through a chain of common acquaintances, on average, consisting of five people. They conducted an experiment in two cities. 300 envelopes were created, which each participant in the experiment had to give to another person who lived in this city. The restriction was that envelopes could only be handed over to acquaintances. From the calculations, it was possible to determine that each envelope went through six hands. This is how the theory of six handshakes was born.

Over time, e-mail appeared, and this experiment was repeated by sociologists at Columbia University. They created 20 secret people to whom the letters were supposed to reach, thereby confirming that the initial volunteers knew them through friends. It turned out that a volunteer from Australia found a classified person from Siberia in just 4 messages - this was the first successful identification of a classified target.


Microft also conducted a similar experiment. This time they had 240 million people at their disposal, and each of them knew any person through 6.6 steps. On this occasion, there is even a common joke that each of us knows the English queen through 5 acquaintances.

Also, the well-known social network Vkontakte created the application “The chain of friends - the theory of six handshakes“. But the audience in contact is not the whole world, but only the CIS countries, so this theory can be called the “theory of 3-5 handshakes”, which means that each participant in the Contact knows the other through 3-5 mutual acquaintances.

But personally I did not install this application myself. I rarely visit VKontakte, and as a rule I go there if I need to write a message to someone or download music or video, for this I use the catch in contact program.

It is worth noting that there are practically no chains longer than 6 people, which once again confirms the theory of six handshakes!


Graphical view of the theory of six handshakes

The University of Milan and the social network Facebook also conducted a joint study of the theory of six handshakes, based on data from the Facebook social graph. It was found that 4.74 communication levels separate any two Facebook users. For the US, the number of links was 4.37.

By the way, on the basis of the "small world" theory, many popular games in the United States arose. For example, scientists play Erdős Number. The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős is one of the major scientists of the 20th century, having a huge number of co-authored works. You need to find the shortest chain from him to another famous scientist. If he wrote some work together with Erdős, then his Erdős number is equal to one. If in collaboration with someone who, in turn, wrote something with Paul Erdős, then this number is two, and so on. Almost all Nobel laureates have small Erdős numbers.

VKontakte users test the theory of 6 handshakes

A funny game is walking around the expanses of the VKontakte website. "Theory of 6 handshakes" finds its real confirmation. Moreover, you can be familiar with a person after 6 handshakes, even if he lives in another country.

To check you need to do the following:

Write in the search for people any name and surname that come to mind. From the resulting list, select a person not from your city, but even better away, to make it more interesting.

Now go to his friends list and go to the page of the first in the list (unfamiliar friends are ranked by rating). On this person's page, open the list of friends and click on the first friend again. Do this several times and count the handshakes. On average, there are 3-5.

Personally, I experimented myself and was surprised by the results. In the first case, my chain turned out to be only 2 "handshakes", in the second - 4, and the longest one turned out to be exactly 6. Surprisingly, the theory works!

True, there were cases when there were 7 or even 9 handshakes, but they are many times less.
Try it and you will be surprised))

 

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