being a psychology student means i accumulate a lot of irrelevant knowledge about scientific studies. i recently gained an interest in stanley milgram, who is infamous for his studies on obedience (look it up, the results are fascinating). one of his lesser-known projects examined the ‘familiar stranger phenomenon’.
familiar strangers are people that you see most days of your life, but never interact with: people that you might have seen for years at the train station, whilst out walking your dog, or at the gym, but have never even said hello to. in an innovative study, milgram took photographs of people on train platforms during rush hour, and then asked commuters to look at the photographs and circle the people that they saw almost everyday of their lives but had never spoken to. the typical commuter in new york city knew about four familiar strangers.
milgram became fascinated by this strange phenomenon, referring to them as a “special kind of frozen relationship”, and noting: “we spoke to people in station after station, and this is what they told us. as the years go by, familiar strangers become harder to talk to. the barrier hardens. if we were to meet one of these strangers far from the station, say, when we were abroad, we would stop, shake hands, and acknowledge for the first time that we know each other. but not here.”
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1 comments:
I'm real familiar with Milgram's obedience experiments but, wasn't aware of the familiar stranger phenomenon. It really makes a lot of sense. I think it develops because after a while you feel the time has passed when perhaps you should have made contact with the person, and it just becomes increasingly awkward to do so.. Thanks for the information!
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