My own experience:
My folder was passed precisely along the pathway that I hypothesized. Me--->Julia--->Kimberly--->Elizabeth--->Susan Yoon. It was exciting to see that my plan for this folder’s path succeeded and that Julia relayed my message accurately to the other pre-planned intermediaries in the chain. Although we’ve all played the “telephone” game before and know that more often than not, messages become greatly distorted with each additional intermediary, I think the fact that I repeated the message three times to Julia during our hand-off conversation made a difference in Julia recognizing how important this pathway was to me. Since I gave the folder to Julia on a Sunday night, and knew that the last intermediary had a class with Susan Yoon on Monday evenings, I figured my folder would not make it to Susan Yoon until the following Monday. I was wrong. My folder made it to Susan Yoon on Tuesday, September 26th, only two days after I handed it to the first intermediary! I was surprised to find that the folder got there so soon, but I was not surprised that it did get there. I think the success of my folder was primarily due to the fact that I planned out the path in advance, and asked the intermediaries only to deliver it. They did not have to do the real work of figuring out who to give the folder to. Wellman states that "the Internet either will create wonderful new forms of community or will destroy community altogether" (p.8). Later on in the semester we learned from Wellman and Gulia about the Internet's supplemental role in communication (p.339). I would definitely agree that having the internet at my disposal fostered the Penn community I was already a part of and helped me find my best 2nd alter. Without it, I would've likely made the "wrong small world choice" according to Killworth. I needed to have the "full information", or rather, know the "actual shortest path" (p.86). Without the internet, I can almost guarantee my chain would have been longer. Julia was the last person on my mind when I received the folder in class.
Granovetter's "Strength of Weak Ties" article inspired me to be brave and give the folder to someone who was a weak tie. He talks about how weak ties can often lead you to bridges, connecting you to people who are otherwise out of your network reach (p.1364). Besides the fact that Julia was a weak tie, she was also a freshman. This was my only real hesitation - passing the folder through two freshmen, one who I barely knew, and one I didn’t know at all. In the Stevenson et. al. article it reads, “we would expect that freshmen would have less connections to others as compared to seniors” (p.2). This wasn’t true in my case, as Kimberly is a freshman and had the precise connection to an Education grad student that I needed to reach. In the results of their study, “no student ever passed a folder to a student in a lower class” (p.5). However, my folder was eventually passed through a graduate student before reaching the target, as were the folders in the Stevenson study which “converged on faculty, graduate students and staff” because of their closeness to the administration (p.5).
McPherson touches on the idea of geography becoming less of an issue for network ties and how this shift is affecting our social networks. I found it interesting, however, that I lived in the same building as my second and third alters. Had I lived in a more "upper class" building, my first hand-off might have been different. As I thought about this, I wondered how many other student within our study handed it off to someone who lives in their close proximity. Although Penn is a small community to begin with, I wonder if anyone else gave it to someone who lived in their own house/dorm. This would have been an interesting measurement for future Small World class experiments.
The Stevenson study also found that each sex was “more likely to pass folders across boundaries while keeping the folder within their gender” (p.6). This turned out to be true in my case as well, as the chain consisted of all females, and more specifically female to female links between boundaries such as different classes within undergraduate students, undergraduate to graduate, and White to Asian.
Aggregate results:
The aggregate results for Susan Yoon and Antonio Polley differed significantly. The Susan Yoon folders had a success rate of 80%, while the Antonio Polley folders had a success rate of only 25%. In the Stevenson study it notes that “Lundberg had found a completion rate of 57% in his organizational study as compared to a 21% rate in his society study” (p.4). Because both the Stevenson and the Penn Small World studies were also organizational, we could expect a completion rate of 57%. However, the Stevenson study only achieved a 27% success rate, similar to the Antonio Polley success rate of 25%. On the other hand, the Susan Yoon success rate far exceeded the supposed organizational study success rate. But taking the average success rate of Susan Yoon and Antonio Polley we find a success rate of around 53%, much closer to the expected 57%. This makes me wonder how Lundberg got this percentage, and if he too, aggregated the results to form a more holistic hypothesis. It wasn’t surprising, however, that our class had an easier time getting the folders to Susan Yoon since she is an assistant professor here at Penn and works with students on a daily basis, while Antonio Polley is a staff member who probably rarely interacts with students outside of his affiliation.
One result of our class’ study that differed significantly from the Stevenson study was the act of passing the folders from students in a higher class to students in a lower class. While in the Stevenson study, no student ever passed a folder downward in class ranking, 29% did so in the Antonio Polley study and 60% in the Susan Yoon. Further, 40% of the completed chains in the Antonio Polley study were downward hand-offs between students, 56% of the Susan Yoon completed chains also exhibited this student transfer trend.
Also, unlike the particular convergence trend that occurred on faculty, graduate students, and staff, there was only one out of all the last intermediate links for the completed chains that had a frequency of 2. Every other last intermediate link was only utilized once. This goes against Stevenson’s idea of convergence points and Milgram’s finding of “a decrease in the number of different persons who were involved in the chains as they approached the target” (p.102).
Out of 10 students who participated in the Susan Yoon part of the study, 8 had gender homophily throughout. In the Antonio Polley study, out of 8 students, only 1 had gender homophily throughout the chain. This could help describe the relevant success and failure of the Susan Yoon paths and the Antonio Polley paths respectively. In the Korte and Milgram study we learned that the majority of racial crossovers occurred between the last intermediate and the target (p.106). Although Antonio Polley is a male and many of the students in the class are females, the success rate might have been higher if the gender crossover occurred later in the chain (i.e. at the last link).
Another result that differed from the Stevenson article and likely contributed to the failure of delivery of the Antonio Polley was the affiliation crossover. Stevenson notes the reliability of faculty, graduate students and staff by finding that “7 out of 8 folders that reached these groups were passed directly to the target administrator” (p.5). It is interesting that for the Antonio Polley folders, the crossover from student to staff for the successful folders occurred only at the link between the last intermediary and Antonio himself. 3 out of the 6 remaining unsuccessful folders made the crossover to these affiliations sooner in the chain, with the last 3 never making this crossover at all. So although in the Stevenson article these were reliable intermediaries, they weren’t in the case of Antonio Polley. However, in the Susan Yoon study, the folders that passed through these avenues before reaching the target were successful. In this case Korte and Milgram were correct in saying that going down or across the status ladder is more successful than trying to go up it for the last link to the target. They find a striking pattern of "status descent of the chain at the last link" (p.107). For our study, it would've been hard to find connections above our targets, especially for Susan Yoon because undergraduates are far more likely to know others students rather than professors, let alone the bosses of professors. The difference in results for Antonio and Susan could’ve been for several reasons. The reason that seems most plausible to me is that Susan Yoon’s network is likely more professionally organized and weakly tied while Antonio Polley’s network might consist of few professional ties and more specialized close ties within his research/work. I would also say that because of Susan Yoon’s job here at Penn she is likely more connected to the Penn community than Antonio Polley.
Link to Assignment #1 - Part 1:
http://www.mysocialnetwork.net/blog/481/g23/2006/09/stalking_and_scheming_4_degree.html