[N1E]≡ [PDF] The Tipping Point How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell 9780316346627 Books

The Tipping Point How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell 9780316346627 Books

Download As PDF : The Tipping Point How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell 9780316346627 Books

The Tipping Point How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell 9780316346627 Books

I read "blink" and "The Tipping Point" together over the span of a week. Both books were very interesting and touched on similar insights into human behavior and psychology. "The Tipping Point" was similar in style to "blink" in that it presented a small handful of themes over and over to prove the premise the author initially laid out at the beginning of the book. Which is, of course, very convenient for the author. Gladwell essentially has a theory for why cool fads and trends catch on, and in writing this book he appears to have scoured a mixed bag of scientific and non-scientific psychological studies and historical observations to support his theory. The problem with this method is that its not the best way to prove the validity of a theory.

One of the most excruciating passages in the book is when Gladwell tries to argue that former ABC news anchor Peter Jennings successfully swayed voters with his facial expressions in the early 1980's. A study apparently suggested that Jennings made favorable facial expressions while introducing stories about Regan but had a neutral face when introducing stories about Walter Mondale, and this caused viewers to change their voting habits. The author seriously tries to make his case solely on the fact that post-election ABC viewers were more likely to say that they voted for Regan than Mondale. It never even occurs to the author (even for a fleeting moment) that maybe ABC news viewers were/are more conservative as a group and thus predisposed to vote for a conservative candidate anyway. The sentence "Because serial killers drink milk, milk drinking must cause people to become serial killers" is a classic example of a Gladwell "proof."

Taken as a whole, this book is a bit scary because its a likable best seller, but its unfortunately a sort of misguided Fox News or USA Today version of what could be a very interesting discussion. I hope more books will be written in this area, because it truly is a realm that needs more analysis.


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The Tipping Point How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell 9780316346627 Books Reviews

As Usual, Malcolm Gladwell is a great story teller. The book is about the small things that can make huge changes. The book is interesting and fun to read, but there are two big problems
a) Malcolm Gladwell is not a scientist, and he lacks the skepticism which is so mauch an important part of science. He starts with the story of the crime fall in NY that came shortly after the start of the "broken windows" policy. The "fact" that the "broken windows"policy made such a huge change serves him well for his arguments, but there is a problem here. the claim that the "broken windows" policy was the main factor in reducing the crime at that time in NY, is an assumption, and by now we have strong reasons to believe that it played only a mior role in the crime reduction. Other factors such as reduction of lead in fuel have much stronger correlation with the crime reduction, and in many other places, as well, while efforts to replicate the "broken windows" policy elsewhere did not produce the same results. So his first chapter is about a nice but false story that if it was true, was showing an interesting nature of how vast changes in behavior happen.

The second problem, is that the book was written before that Internet became a major player in the field. By now it is problably the most major player, but the book describes how things were before the Internet became a major player. In this sense, the book describes how things were in another era. Things have completely changed since then.
Some may say “The Tipping Point” belabors the obvious, which is that things change, sometimes overnight. True, too true, but so what? Malcolm Gladwell, the master of popularized social research, makes us care about the mechanisms of seemingly abrupt shifts in the course of human events—such as why William Dawes’ midnight ride to warn that the British were coming didn’t start the American Revolution, but Paul Revere’s did. Turns out Revere’s personality helped his news galvanize patriots to pick up their rifles, while Dawes’ identical cry made people turn over and go back to sleep. Revere had two of the three traits Gladwell identifies as necessary to the spread of social trends he was a Connector and a Maven. Revere had a vast rolodex of acquaintances in colonial Massachusetts and he knew everything there was to know about the nascent independence movement. He set the scene for resistance to the onmarching British, and a few local men of Gladwell’s third type, the Persuaders, finished the job of rallying the militias of Concord and Lexington.

Gladwell is adept at explaining the academic research that led to such popular ideas as “six degrees of separation” and relating such social science experimentation to his overall theme of how change happens. He goes deeply into the discoveries about learning that led to the success of “Sesame Street” and “Blue’s Clues”—these shows’ producers used the idea of “stickiness” to instill basic principles and values in pre-schoolers. The “broken windows” theory of policing gets a thorough explainer, including a side trip into how do-gooding seminarians can allow themselves to avoid being good Samaritans. Advertising is one of the great accelerators of trends, and Gladwell marshals a few Madison Ave. case studies to show how commercials tip us into parting with our hard-earned cash.

Absolutely painless learning is what Gladwell offers, with a side benefit of greater self-awareness.
I read "blink" and "The Tipping Point" together over the span of a week. Both books were very interesting and touched on similar insights into human behavior and psychology. "The Tipping Point" was similar in style to "blink" in that it presented a small handful of themes over and over to prove the premise the author initially laid out at the beginning of the book. Which is, of course, very convenient for the author. Gladwell essentially has a theory for why cool fads and trends catch on, and in writing this book he appears to have scoured a mixed bag of scientific and non-scientific psychological studies and historical observations to support his theory. The problem with this method is that its not the best way to prove the validity of a theory.

One of the most excruciating passages in the book is when Gladwell tries to argue that former ABC news anchor Peter Jennings successfully swayed voters with his facial expressions in the early 1980's. A study apparently suggested that Jennings made favorable facial expressions while introducing stories about Regan but had a neutral face when introducing stories about Walter Mondale, and this caused viewers to change their voting habits. The author seriously tries to make his case solely on the fact that post-election ABC viewers were more likely to say that they voted for Regan than Mondale. It never even occurs to the author (even for a fleeting moment) that maybe ABC news viewers were/are more conservative as a group and thus predisposed to vote for a conservative candidate anyway. The sentence "Because serial killers drink milk, milk drinking must cause people to become serial killers" is a classic example of a Gladwell "proof."

Taken as a whole, this book is a bit scary because its a likable best seller, but its unfortunately a sort of misguided Fox News or USA Today version of what could be a very interesting discussion. I hope more books will be written in this area, because it truly is a realm that needs more analysis.