- Email: [email protected]
The new New Thing
DISSECTING ROOM
The new New Thing The tipping point: how little things can make a big difference Malcolm Gladwell. London: Little, Brown & Company, 2000. Pp 288. £14·99. ISBN 0316648523.
T
h e tipping point has much to recommend it—certain fascinating ideas and phenomena explained clearly. But it also has much to deplore—tendencies towards pop psychology and writing to match. The book is subtitled “How little things can make a big difference”, and Gladwell uses the sharp fall in crime in New York City in the 1990s and the sudden hipness of Hush Puppies, previously chronically unfashionable, to introduce the book, as examples of sudden, unpredictable trends. He claims to apply the thinking of an epidemiologist to how social and cultural trends spread. “The Tipping Point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point”, the tiny, decisive moment where the slightest push makes all the difference. Gladwell tells us of the “Three Rules of Epidemics.” The first is The Law of the Few—in any epidemic, a small group of people infect a disproportion-
Kobe Van Looveren
ate amount of people. He uses the examples of Darnell “Boss Man” McGee, who infected at least 30 women with HIV, and Gaetan Dugas, “Patient Zero”, the flight attendant linked to over 40 of the earliest cases of AIDS in New York and San Francisco. The same principle applies to social and cultural epidemics. Gladwell defines who the few are: Connectors, who know a lot of people in different social groupings; Mavens, well-informed people who discover new products, concepts and trends; and Salesmen, who persuade people to try The New Thing. A social epidemic must touch base with representatives of all three groups. The second rule of epidemics is the Stickiness Factor. Gladwell uses the examples of the famous Winston’s cigarettes slogan (“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should”) and the story of Sesame Street to illustrate the properties of The New Thing that make it memorable. The third law of epidemics is the Power of Context. In 1964, a woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in Queens on the street with her 38 neighbours watching, none of whom bothered to call the police. At the time it was cited as evidence of the selfishness induced by urban life. But subsequent psychological work found that in such events, the biggest factor that determines whether someone helps is the number of witnesses. The more witnesses, the less likely that an individual will take the responsibility to act; it is diffused among too many people. In other words, the effect of The New Thing depends on the This photo was taken by Kobe Van Looveren (aged context. 13) of Belgium, winner of the Young Wildlife Gladwell invokes Photographer of the Year 2000 competition. The the tumble in New exhibition can be seen at the Natural History York crime statistics, Museum, London, UK, until Feb 25, 2001. and in particular the
402
concept known as “Broken Windows”; apparently petty crime like graffiti or broken windows acts as a suitable context for violent crime. Thus minor changes such as cleaning up graffiti help spread the social epidemic of not committing crime. The lesson here is that context is crucially important in behaviour. A rather mean-spirited experiment on a group of seminarians is cited as proving this; they were asked to prepare a sermon and cross over to another building. Some were told to sermonise on “The Good Samaritan”, while others were given more general texts. As they headed off, some were told that they were running late while others were told they were early. En route they encountered a man who had collapsed on the ground and was in some distress. It was found that the seminarians who helped the stranger were those who were running early— even those who were about to speak on the Good Samaritan would hurry past if they thought they were late. Thus the physical context (lateness versus punctuality) was more important than the moralistic context (the actual content of the sermon) in determining behaviour. Gladwell has many more examples than those referred to here; from the epidemic of suicide in Micronesia to the rise and fall of Airwalk sneakers. His universe is a giddy one, one where “with the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped”. As an adventure through a world of ideas, it is highly enjoyable. But as a work of literature, it has an irritating factor of its own. A critic quoted on the press release for this book compares Gladwell to Edmund Wilson. Another literary figure came to mind: Anthony Robbins, author of Unlimited power and Awaking the giant within. What sounds like a cross between popular science writing and cultural commentary instead occupies a no-man’s-land between books for salesmen and self help books for people who don’t read. The tipping point marks something of a dumbing down for Gladwell, who writes thought-provoking, insightful pieces with quicksilver intelligence for the New Yorker. One can’t help thinking that Gladwell started writing a very different book, and commercial imperatives took over. Or possibly it is the condescension of the metropolitan New Yorker writer to the little folks out there in Middle America. There is a fascinating book to be written about Gladwell’s basic thesis—that little things not only make a big difference, they make the biggest difference. This is, alas, not it. Seamus Sweeney [email protected]
THE LANCET • Vol 357 • February 3, 2001
For personal use only. Reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
The new New Thing The tipping point: how little things can make a big difference Malcolm Gladwell. London: Little, Brown & Company, 2000. Pp 288. £14·99. ISBN 0316648523.
T
h e tipping point has much to recommend it—certain fascinating ideas and phenomena explained clearly. But it also has much to deplore—tendencies towards pop psychology and writing to match. The book is subtitled “How little things can make a big difference”, and Gladwell uses the sharp fall in crime in New York City in the 1990s and the sudden hipness of Hush Puppies, previously chronically unfashionable, to introduce the book, as examples of sudden, unpredictable trends. He claims to apply the thinking of an epidemiologist to how social and cultural trends spread. “The Tipping Point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point”, the tiny, decisive moment where the slightest push makes all the difference. Gladwell tells us of the “Three Rules of Epidemics.” The first is The Law of the Few—in any epidemic, a small group of people infect a disproportion-
Kobe Van Looveren
ate amount of people. He uses the examples of Darnell “Boss Man” McGee, who infected at least 30 women with HIV, and Gaetan Dugas, “Patient Zero”, the flight attendant linked to over 40 of the earliest cases of AIDS in New York and San Francisco. The same principle applies to social and cultural epidemics. Gladwell defines who the few are: Connectors, who know a lot of people in different social groupings; Mavens, well-informed people who discover new products, concepts and trends; and Salesmen, who persuade people to try The New Thing. A social epidemic must touch base with representatives of all three groups. The second rule of epidemics is the Stickiness Factor. Gladwell uses the examples of the famous Winston’s cigarettes slogan (“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should”) and the story of Sesame Street to illustrate the properties of The New Thing that make it memorable. The third law of epidemics is the Power of Context. In 1964, a woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in Queens on the street with her 38 neighbours watching, none of whom bothered to call the police. At the time it was cited as evidence of the selfishness induced by urban life. But subsequent psychological work found that in such events, the biggest factor that determines whether someone helps is the number of witnesses. The more witnesses, the less likely that an individual will take the responsibility to act; it is diffused among too many people. In other words, the effect of The New Thing depends on the This photo was taken by Kobe Van Looveren (aged context. 13) of Belgium, winner of the Young Wildlife Gladwell invokes Photographer of the Year 2000 competition. The the tumble in New exhibition can be seen at the Natural History York crime statistics, Museum, London, UK, until Feb 25, 2001. and in particular the
402
concept known as “Broken Windows”; apparently petty crime like graffiti or broken windows acts as a suitable context for violent crime. Thus minor changes such as cleaning up graffiti help spread the social epidemic of not committing crime. The lesson here is that context is crucially important in behaviour. A rather mean-spirited experiment on a group of seminarians is cited as proving this; they were asked to prepare a sermon and cross over to another building. Some were told to sermonise on “The Good Samaritan”, while others were given more general texts. As they headed off, some were told that they were running late while others were told they were early. En route they encountered a man who had collapsed on the ground and was in some distress. It was found that the seminarians who helped the stranger were those who were running early— even those who were about to speak on the Good Samaritan would hurry past if they thought they were late. Thus the physical context (lateness versus punctuality) was more important than the moralistic context (the actual content of the sermon) in determining behaviour. Gladwell has many more examples than those referred to here; from the epidemic of suicide in Micronesia to the rise and fall of Airwalk sneakers. His universe is a giddy one, one where “with the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped”. As an adventure through a world of ideas, it is highly enjoyable. But as a work of literature, it has an irritating factor of its own. A critic quoted on the press release for this book compares Gladwell to Edmund Wilson. Another literary figure came to mind: Anthony Robbins, author of Unlimited power and Awaking the giant within. What sounds like a cross between popular science writing and cultural commentary instead occupies a no-man’s-land between books for salesmen and self help books for people who don’t read. The tipping point marks something of a dumbing down for Gladwell, who writes thought-provoking, insightful pieces with quicksilver intelligence for the New Yorker. One can’t help thinking that Gladwell started writing a very different book, and commercial imperatives took over. Or possibly it is the condescension of the metropolitan New Yorker writer to the little folks out there in Middle America. There is a fascinating book to be written about Gladwell’s basic thesis—that little things not only make a big difference, they make the biggest difference. This is, alas, not it. Seamus Sweeney [email protected]
THE LANCET • Vol 357 • February 3, 2001
For personal use only. Reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.