This is number 28 in my series on learning theories. I'm gradually working through the alphabet of psychologists and theorists, providing a brief overview of each theory, and how it can be applied in education. Previous posts in this series are all linked below. My most recent post explored Jack Merizow's Transformative Learning theory. In this post, I will examine Stanley Milgram's concept of Six Degrees of Separation. As usual, this is a simplified and concise interpretation of the theory, so if you wish to learn more, please read the associated literature.
The Theory
You are at a party, and begin conversing with another guest. You've never met them before, but as you talk you begin to realise you have a mutual acquaintance. 'What a small world we live in' you remark. This is a phenomenon that we all seem to have experienced at some point in our lives. It fascinated social psychologist Stanley Milgram. He was interested not so much in mutual acquaintances, but wanted to show that 'even when I don't know someone who knows you, I still know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who does know you. Milgram's question was, how many someones are in the chain?' (Watts, 2003, p38.)
So Milgram's notion of six degrees is not so much a theory of learning, more a social contact theory, but it has significant implications for learning in the social media age. Milgram theorised that it could be established that no-one is separated from anyone else in the world by more than six social contacts. Who we know and who they know, he believed, define our social structure. In his Small World experiments, Milgram set out to establish evidence that this was indeed the case. The basic data gathering methods and procedures for the Small World experiment can be found at this link. The results confirmed his hypothesis, suggesting that on average in the USA, people were indeed separated by no more than 6 social connections.
How it can be applied in education
Social ties are crucially important in the digital age, for as Henry Jenkins argues, it's the dynamic and participatory elements of reaffirming a group's social ties that helps us to acquire our collective knowledge (Jenkins, 2006, p. 54). Where groups collaborate, social ties are critical in ensuring that their aims are achieved. The notion of wisdom of crowds put forward by James Surowiecki (2004) relies on people working together, even when they don't know each other directly. For teachers, seen in the context of social media, this is a key concept, because it opens up new possibilities for their students to connect with other students, or indeed world class experts anywhere in the world. Learning within a highly connected community of practice provides learners with new vistas, greater scope for exploration, and access to dialogue at the highest level in their field of study.
It is highly likely that in highly connected societies, where social media and mobile phones are commonplace and regularly used, the six degrees of separation proposed by Milgram may in fact be a conservative estimate. Social media can reduce the degrees of separation. It's much more likely that we are now able to connect directly or within one or two social connections to just about anyone who uses social media. Anyone who uses Twitter regularly will tell you that they meet many people online who have a mutual interest, and often find their connections through other people they mutually follow. When they finally meet in person, they feel they already know each other, even though their relationship has been mediated through text based messaging technology. But that is the subject matter for another blog post...
References
Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.
Surowiecki, J. (2004) The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few. London: Abacus.
Watts, D. (2003) Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. London: William Heinemann.
Previous posts in this series:
1. Anderson ACT-R Cognitive Architecture
2. Argyris Double Loop Learning
3. Bandura Social Learning Theory
4. Bruner Scaffolding Theory
5. Craik and Lockhart Levels of Processing
6. Csíkszentmihályi Flow Theory
7. Dewey Experiential Learning
8. Engeström Activity Theory
9. Ebbinghaus Learning and Forgetting Curves
10. Festinger Social Comparison Theory
11. Festinger Cognitive Dissonance Theory
12. Gardner Multiple Intelligences Theory
13. Gibson Affordances Theory
14. Gregory Visual Perception Hypothesis
15. Hase and Kenyon Heutagogy
16. Hull Drive Reduction Theory
17. Inhelder and Piaget Formal Operations Stage
18. Jung Archetypes and Synchronicity
19. Jahoda Ideal Mental Health
20. Koffka Gestalt theory
21. Köhler Insight learning
22. Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle
23. Knowles Andragogy
24. Lave Situated Learning
25. Lave and Wenger Communities of Practice
26. Maslow Hierarchy of Human Needs
27. Merizow Transformative Learning
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Our mutual friends by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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