That experiment is carried out online, and some 60,000 people from 170 countries have taken part.Įach participant is assigned a random "target," one of 18 people located around the world. Watts has led perhaps the most significant research to date on the subject at the Small World Project at Columbia University in New York. What matters is that it's not hundreds or thousands."īut as widespread as the notion has become, there has been very little effort to actually prove the theory in experiments. "It doesn't really matter whether it is six or seven or eight. The number six is really arbitrary, according to Professor Duncan Watts of Columbia University.
#Six degrees of separation watch online movie#
This became known in the general population as six degrees of separation, later the basis of a play and movie of the same name.
Of the chains that were completed, the average number of links was six. The participants were told to send a letter in the mail to someone they knew personally who they thought might know, or might know someone who knew, this lawyer. The six degrees of separation theory began as a little known social experiment done in the 1960s by Stanley Milgrim, best known for a controversial study in which he instructed ordinary people to deliver electric shocks to volunteers.īut before this "obedience to authority" research, Milgrim worked on a less well known project where he had volunteers, primarily in the Midwest, attempt to connect with someone they did not know, a lawyer who lived in Boston. The winner they pick will be revealed on ABC July 30 and the winning single will be released that night, digitally distributed by Sony BMG through iTunes and other online outlets. She'll help each singer produce a demo of their best work, which will then be critiqued by three judges, all pros from the music industry. The three contestants voted best by the audience will move on to studio sessions with Martina McBride herself at her recording studio in Nashville.
Paired with some of the best songwriters in town, they'll be charged with learning a new song and then face off in a singing competition held at Nashville's famous Wildhorse Saloon. So Kristina, Mark, Deanne, Ken, Dani and Thomas, who began the quest to connect in hometowns across America, will come to Nashville, too, to see how far their talent can take them in the second round of the challenge. John Kay, lead singer for the legendary rock band Steppenwolf, opened the door for McBride to a chain of helpful strangers leading to a music career envied by her peers and beloved by her fans.īut while connections may have helped McBride, connections alone aren't enough if you don't have talent. Ironically, McBride feels she has been the beneficiary of six degrees of separation in her own life and career.īorn with ample talent and the will to make it, the star had no connections in Nashville except one person her husband knew. "I don't think so." McBride's Own Six Degrees "I can't imagine six people could know someone who knows someone who could get to me," she said. To complete this part of the competition, contestants had to go to someone they know and ask them to take them to someone they know and so on with the goal of eventually getting to someone who knows Martina McBride personally.Ĭould they do it? McBride herself had doubts.