This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.
Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here .
What is the Kevin Bacon game? How is it played? Where did the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon come from?
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon) is a game in which you attempt to link any Hollywood actor to Kevin Bacon is six steps or fewer. The game came out of the six degrees of separation theory.
We’ll cover how to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and what the game says about how we’re all connected.
How to Play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
A party game called “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” attempts to link Hollywood actors through their movie roles the way Milgram’s small-world experiment linked people through letters. You start with a random actor, then name another actor from one of her movies, then name an actor who has been in a movie with that second actor, and continue until you get to someone who’s shared the screen with Bacon — trying to make the connection in six steps or fewer. For instance, you can get from Mary Pickford to Bacon in three steps because she was in Screen Snapshots with Clark Gable, who played in Combat America with Tony Romano, who was in Starting Over with Bacon. This is the essence of the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.
The Kevin Bacon game works because Bacon had roles in so many movies. However, when a computer scientist calculated the connectedness of about a quarter-million actors who have appeared on TV and in movies, he found that the most well-connected actor was actually Rod Steiger. You could connect any actor with Steiger in less than three steps because not only because he had roles in a lot of movies, but also because the movies were so wide-ranging — from dramas to Westerns, and Oscar winners to flops. Within Hollywood, Steiger occupied many worlds, and in those many diverse circles he accumulated a huge number of connections.
Where Did “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” Come From?
The game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is based on the six-degrees-of-separation theory, which came from the small-world experiment.
In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the “small-world experiment” to research how closely people are connected. He sent letters to 160 people in Nebraska, giving them the name and address of a stockbroker in Boston and instructing them to write their name on the letter and then send it to a friend or acquaintance who might get the letter one step closer to that stockbroker. Each person who received the chain letter would do the same, until a friend or acquaintance of the stockbroker finally received it and would send it directly to him.
At the end of the experiment, Milgram found that most of the letters reached the stockbroker in five or six steps, creating the concept that people all over the world are all connected by six degrees of separation. This is the origin of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.
Even further, Milgram discovered that half of the letters were ultimately delivered to the stockbroker by three people. Although everyone is linked by just six degrees of separation, a small group of people are connected to a disproportionately large number of people. Those few, well-connected people are the Connectors. Actors like Kevin Bacon who have even more connections than most are connectors.
(Shortform note: The notion that a handful of powerful people can spread a message further and more effectively than the rest of the population is called the Influentials theory, and has been a staple in marketing for 50 years. However, several more recent experiments by network-theory scientist Duncan Watts determine that these rare trendsetters — or hubs, in his experiment — are no more influential in spreading an idea than the rest of the population. Watts recreated Milgram’s small-world experiment with email and found that only 5 percent of messages passed through Connectors. Additionally, Watts has found that the public’s mood and susceptibility to influence at a given time is a far greater determinant of whether an epidemic tips than the strength of the influencer spreading the idea.)
Connectors Bring People Together
Connectors tend to be connected to many communities — whether through interests and hobbies, jobs that cause them to work with people in other fields, or other experiences. Their strength is in occupying many different worlds, and bringing them together.
(Shortform example: A Connector may be a journalist who interviews many different people for her work, who also plays on a recreational volleyball team, and is a regular at the local rock climbing gym, as well as a familiar face at her church, and also active and well-known in a specific online forum. She knows many people in these communities on a first-name basis and would be able to connect them if, for example, someone on her volleyball team were looking for a lawyer, and she happened to know a great one who attended her church.)
———End of Preview———
Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best summary of "The Tipping Point" at Shortform . Learn the book's critical concepts in 20 minutes or less .
Here's what you'll find in our full Tipping Point summary :
- What makes some movements tip into social epidemics
- The 3 key types of people you need on your side
- How to cause tipping points in business and life
