Small University Experiment
The findings for our “Small University Experiment” reflect and reinforce much of what we have studied and read this semester on Stanley Milgram’s “small world” study (1967). In Milgram’s Nebraska study, he found five intermediaries to be the median number of links between the starter and the target. In our study, the mean for Susan Yoon’s group was 3.25 for completed chains, and 1 for incomplete chains. The mean for Antonio Polley’s group was 4.5 for completed chains and 2.33 for incomplete chains. This suggests that Milgram’s hypothesis may not be generalizable to every situation and population, as the degrees separating us is less than 6, on average. Or, this may be skewed or incomplete due to the amount of low response rates.
In his article, “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg,” Malcolm Gladwell discusses Milgram’s chain letter study with the stockbroker in Omaha, Nebraska. Milgram asserts that five intermediaries on average can connect two people across the world, which is essentially his theory of six degrees of separation. However, it is mentioned that each of these degrees are not necessarily equal (5). I thought that this was very interesting and relevant to our “small world university” study. This theory can be drawn from the evidence that half of the packages in the Milgram study had touched the hands of three men: Jacobs, Jones and Brown. Although in our study, “June C” was the only repeat for the final link, if this study were done on a larger scale, I think that she might have had a larger frequency than the rest of the final links. As Milgram asserts, “It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those few” (6). Although it is very difficult to conclude the accuracy of the relate-ability of Milgram’s theory to our results, one can surmise that central actors would be clearer to determine in a larger-scale study. As Killworth, McCarty, Bernard and House explain in their article, “The accuracy of small world chains in social networks,” there are many flaws in our analyzing the chains in social network analysis. The authors simply conclude that “…inaccuracy in selection of small world chain intermediaries is predominant…” (95).
I passed my folder (Y8) to a strong tie that majors in BBB (Biological Basis of Behavior). What I find to be so interesting about my chain links is that the first three people in my chain were all female juniors in the college. The fourth person on my chain (the third link) was a male junior in the college. The only person that I knew on my chain was my initial link, and I did not recognize any of the other names in my link. Also, every person in my link was a student in the college.
I initially chose Lauren to be my initial link for several reasons: I trust her, she is a pre-med student and I thought that she would be enthusiastic about participating in the study. Some of my doubts about picking her as an initial link, such as her isolation in her undergraduate program, may have actually contributed to the fact that my folder never reached Antonio Polley. I spoke to Lauren just after she had passed off her folder. She seemed really confident about it, and explained to me that she was sure that the folder would reach our target with ease and speed. I asked her if she had known who to give it to right away, or if she had to deliberate on the decision. Lauren explained that she had to think about it, but eventually concluded that an acquaintance of hers would be a good choice. The problem is, Lauren never conceptually thought about how this folder would get to Antonio. Instead, she thought about her role in my chain (an egocentric point of view) instead of her role in the larger picture. My hypothesis for this experiment was that based on Granovetter and Monge’s theories, Lauren would be a good choice for an initial link in my chain. Even though I had many doubts about choosing a strong tie over a weak tie because of the “bridging” potentials of a weak tie, I still chose a strong tie that was affiliated with the medical school.
After looking at the different links on my chain, I realized that my links were extremely homogeneous to one another. Although Lauren was my only connection to the medical school, my folder ended up circling around a group of sophomores who did not know how to locate Antonio Polley or move up the hierarchal social networks ladder. They became an isolated group, thereby stopping my chain dead in its tracks. The results of my folder’s journey reveal the possibility of communication becoming severed within a network. My folder probably died because it had no logical or obvious next link. I correctly hypothesized that the folder would be passed primarily among undergraduate, female students. I had optimistically hypothesized that 50% of the folders that reached Antonio would be from the three same final links (As in Milgram’s experiment). Unfortunately, because only two of the folders reached Antonio, we cannot make that assessment on the grounds of this experiment.
While an impressive percentage of Susan Yoon’s folders successfully reached her (80%), only 25% of Antonio Polley’s folders reached him successfully. I am by no means surprised by these findings. It is clear that there is a large divide between the undergraduate medical major concentration and with medical school at Penn. Antonio Polley is one of many lab technicians at the Wistar institute, which most members of my group had never heard of before the day we began this study. In fact, Antonio’s group was at a disadvantage from the start. Susan Yoon is a more accessible target in the Education school. Also, there are more females than males in the undergraduate communications major at Penn. Almost everyone in the school of education is a female. As we have read this year, gender plays a large role in social networks. I think that because all ten of the Susan Yoon groups were female, that they had a larger probability of reaching their target than Antonio’s group. Also, Susan is just a more centrally located actor in the social networks web.
It is noteworthy that the uncompleted chains in Susan’s group both disappeared after two links and within a very short amount of time from the start of the study (2 days for y10 and 6 days for y35). Both Y10 and Y35 are seniors, and one gave her folder to a “very weak” tie while the other gave her folder to a “strong” tie. What does this mean?
I think that the two folders that reached Antonio did so because both R45 and G10 are fifth year seniors, and have some connection to the school of education that other students in our class did not have. Or, maybe they have each had extra communication with career services or graduate programs, exposing them to an entire new network of people. I think that the path that G10’s folder took is truly a piece of evidence for the success of Milgram’s theory: It took G10 six different links (fmffmmM) and touched the hands of students, faculty and staff. It also went through the college, the school of medicine and through Wistar. It took ten days for the second link to pass on the folder (I think that after a week it is very surprising that a folder would be passed at all) and it was done so effectively.
The Small University Experiment that we conducted had both similarities and differences to the “Small World University Experiment” conducted by Stevenson, Davidson, Manev and Walsh at Boston College. Firstly, in our experiment were also faced with the problem of low response rates, which can be seen as the unfinished chain links in our study (eight out of eighteen folders didn’t reach the target person and had incomplete links). In the Stevenson etal. study, there was a major and more obvious hierarchy of communication between upper and lower classmen. In our study, although a large percent of student to student transfers were for students in the same year (for Antonio’s group, it was 42.86% and for Susan’s group it was 40%), there were still a significant amount of student to student in lower class transfers for both targets(28.57% and 60%). This shows that there is more inter-class communication in a college university as opposed to a high school environment. This may be for several reasons, but I would hypothesize that high school places larger importance on class distinctions, and this is seen in sports programs with junior varsity and varsity and with academic classes. In my high school experience, the only time that I ever socialized with upper classmen was during sports team practice and language classes, and even in those classes it was obvious which students were in which classes.
The original design of our study is slightly different from the Steveson etal study. In our study, we had two target-people instead of one, each of whom was more difficult to locate than in the Stevenson etal study. Also, our study started out in the hands of juniors and seniors, whereas their study included freshman through seniors. It would have been interesting to include this element in our study, because we were unable to test the hypothesis that freshman are especially isolated from the rest of the classes.
There was a direct correlation between our study and the Stevenson etal. study when it came to older students. Our study shows that the only two students in Antonio’s group that was able to complete the chain were 5th year seniors. This is relevant because they are more likely having a connection with graduate students and faculty than other students. R45 and G10 both passed their folders to sophomores. In the case of R45, the next link was then a senior. In the case of G10, the next link was a sophomore again. I found this pattern in the successful links to be extremely interesting. R45 chose to give her folder to a female sophomore in the fine arts department, whereas G10 gave hers to a male sophomore in the biochemistry department. Both R45 and G10’s final links before reaching Antonio were male students. This supports the gender theory from the Stevenson etal. experiment: “Women relied more on homophilous ties to pass folders compared to men”(6).
The Stevenson etal. Study suggested four hypotheses that were relevant to our class findings. Hypothesis 1, “The longer the time at the university, the more likely a student is to initiate a successful chain of communication to a target”(2), is proven to be true in our experiment. In Antonio Polley’s group, the two students who had completed their chains were both 5th year seniors. Is this just a coincidence or does it prove that age is a significant indicator of communication within a networks? Hypothesis 2 stated, “Small world folders are more likely to be passed within a class than between classes and occupational groups in a university” (2). This hypothesis did not apply to either target person (I am analyzing completed chains). In Antonio’s group, the percentage of student-student transfers in the same year was 40%, and student to student transfers in a lower class was also 40%. In Susan’s group, the student-student transfers in the same year were 44.4%, whereas the student-student transfers in a lower class were 55.4%. Hypothesis 3 stated, “Small world folders will converge on faculty and staff before reaching their target” (3). The results for Susan’s group suggest that every person to give the folder to Susan was either a member of the GSE School or an Administrator. This is completely congruent with Stevenson’s findings—in fact, the two students whose folders did not reach Susan were unable to make the link to the graduate school of education or some other graduate-level person. The data from Antonio’s group is more complex—the two students who were able to reach Antonio broke the barriers by entering either the Immunology department or the Wistar Institute (where Antonio works). However, there was a student who reached the Wistar Institute but did not reach Antonio (g16)—this clearly complicates the data. How did certain folders within the Wistar Institute reach Antonio while others continued to circle the same group of people? Hypothesis 4 states, “Small world folders are more likely to be passed to members of the same sex” (3). The pattern of links for Susan’s group is almost entirely female (there is only one male in the entire chain). This is in congruence with Stevenson’s hypothesis. Essentially, since the entire Susan group was female to start, and the target was female, the chains consistently remained in the female gender. Antonio’s group had a difficult time making the transition from female to male, as all but one person in the initial starting group was female. There was a mixture of when the students in Antonio’s group made the transition to male—some did it initially, whiles other chains did not switch until the very end, or at all. Both people to hand Antonio the folder were male. Overall, our study had some similarities to the Stevenson study, but the differences are also extremely flagrant and relevant.
Link to Part One: http://www.mysocialnetwork.net/blog/481/y8/2006/09/small_university_experiment.html