What is the small world theory?

A few decades ago, a Frankfurt grocer asked a newspaper to meet Marlon Brando, who was a big star at that time.

The grocer is an unknown person. He has been running a Turkish barbecue restaurant, which he inherited from his father. The boss worships movie star Marlon Brando very much. He thinks he can meet him in his shop every day, but as an internationally famous movie star, Marlon Brando can't walk into such a small shop for dinner. Therefore, when people hear the boss's wishes, they will always laugh at his overreaching: "One is in the sky and the other is on the ground. How can we meet?" Marlon Brando will never take you seriously. "

But the stubborn barbecue shop owner just won't give up. In the irony of everyone, he suddenly thought of newspapers, and maybe he could make friends with big stars through the power of the media.

After receiving this request, this newspaper also found it ridiculous at first. Making friends with big stars is a distant hope for small people, and many people just think about it. But seeing the applicant's sincere eyes, the newspaper director decided to give it a try.

A human relations agency has become a partner of the newspaper. They hope to find a breakthrough by investigating the interpersonal network of barbecue shop owners. First, the researcher found that the owner of the barbecue shop was an Iraqi immigrant, and he had many friends who immigrated with him. They are scattered in various States of the United States. According to this clue, the researchers found an Iraqi immigrant living in California, who is a friend of the barbecue shop owner.

After finding this friend in California, the research institute began to explore the personal network around him, and found that one of his friends was dating a girl recently, and this girl had a very good friend who was the daughter of a film producer. The filmmaker once made a film called Men's True Color, with Marlon Brando as the leading role.

Everyone was surprised when they found this interpersonal clue. Although the earth we live in is so big, the land of the United States alone is so vast, and the distance from Frankfurt to California is also very far. In the range of hundreds of millions of square kilometers on the earth's surface, among the 6.7 billion human beings, finding the connection between one person and another person thousands of miles away is tantamount to asking for death, and there are only so many people between this small barbecue shop owner and the big star Marlon Brando.

The "Marlon Brando" incident led to a famous interpersonal relationship theory: the six-degree separation theory. Although it seems incredible, practice has proved this fact: on this huge blue planet, everyone's relationship network is complex and intertwined, and any two seemingly unrelated people can reach a communication clue through six people. To be exact, they belong to the same circle and only need six people to know each other. This theory, also known as the "small world theory", was put forward by American social psychologist Myhrgren in 1967 and became a world-famous theory. No matter which country or color, the distance between any two people in the world is only six.