Notes on Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Alright. Enough reading about manliness for now. Back to some nice psychology classics.

I enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's Blink a few years ago and had his other books on my reading list. I just completed Tipping Point  and enjoyed it quite a bit as well.

I like how he explores subjects where we have a knee-jerk response of what should be the obvious answer, but when you dig deep into the evidence, it's not. In this book, he explores a number of phenomena that seem to "come out of nowhere" (the way people understand Pinterest's rise is a perfect Tipping Point story).

My biggest takeaways are that the smallest details can make the biggest differences, and that one thing's or person's rise over others is often much more a matter of circumstance and context than specific traits or actions. I still believe in the importance of one's own actions above the other factors, but this book made me give more weight to the context. In addition, the book reinforced the importance of control of the details of execution (in your product and your work). This point reminded me of the importance of being an expert in your craft and building things the way you think is right, down to the last detail (like Howard Roark of The Fountainhead did). It also reminded me of how Zao Yang of FarmVille told us in a talk on gamification that the size of a character's pupils in a game makes the character's and game's popularity change dramatically (artistic quality and design details can cause things to tip/explode).

Below are the rest of my notes.

Intro

• Hush puppies
  
• Word of mouth brought brand from dying to alive all of a sudden
  
• NY crime rate dropped all of a sudden
  
• Huge change in short time
  
• Fashion trends
  
• Best sellers
  
• Word of mouth
  
• Think of these like epidemics of thoughts
  
• Contagious behavior
  
• Infected ppl with hushpuppies virus by wearing them
  
• Little changes have big effects
  
• Incremental changes then have dramatic effect
  
• Changes happen in a hurry
  
• Rise or fall in a moment
  
• Yawning is contagious
  
• Visually and orally contagious
  
• Creates thoughts and makes emotionally contagious
  
• Epidemics are geometric progression
  
• Single sheet of paper folded fifty times has height going to sun
  
• Sudden change possibility hard to accept
  
• Point of critical mass
  
• Neighborhoods and social problems don't decline in steady profession
  

Ch 1 three rules of epidemics

• Boston syphilis epidemic
  
• Crack was little push that changed everything
  
• Medical treatment breakdown
  
• Changes and destruction of housing projects in other parts of state
  
• Spread function of 3 things: ppl who spread infection, infectious agent, and environment (law of the few, stickiness factor, and the power of context)
  
• Epidemic happens when one of the three changes
  
• 80/20 principle
  
• In epidemics even more extreme
  
• STDs started by a handful of ppl who have way more activity than others
  
• HIV and flu viruses change to become deadlier
  
• Increased stickiness
  
• Epidemics influenced by environment, season
  
• Bystander problem: one variable that mattered most was number of other witnesses
  
• Responsibility for acting in a group is diffused
  
• Key to getting ppl to care lies in smallest details of situation
  

Ch 2: the law of the few, connectors

• News of Paul Revere's ride
  
• Word of mouth epidemic
  
• Shopping decisions most from wom
  
• News tips based not just on content but also on gifts and talents of the men spreading it
  
• Connectors and salesmen
  
• Milgram package mailing experiment to test connectedness
  
• Surprising because we have few friends
  
• Proximity overpowers similarity
  
• Friends with ppl we do things with
  
• Half of letters touched 3 influential ppl
  
• In every walk of life, there are a few individuals who make a ton of friends
  
• Kevin Bacon 6 steps
  
• Lots of weak ties
  
• Span many different worlds and and subculture
  
• Lois Weisberg
  
• Paul Revere
  
• Finds everyone interesting
  
• Mavens ppl of info
  
• Collectors of info and people
  
• Connector and maven personality; mavens obsessed with finding and sharing info
  
• Info brokers
  
• Mavens give data
  
• Collectors spread
  
• Salesmen persuade
  
• Facial expression persuades
  
• Nodding and peter Jennings's smile affect people subconsciously
  
• Micro movements of body
  
• Micro rhythms of synchronous movements, synced to words
  
• Both ppl in convo dance with body and face
  
• Emotional mimicry
  
• Emotional gestures infectious
  
• If I can make u smile, I can make u happy
  
• "Sender" personality with special facial muscles
  

Ch 3 the stickiness factor, sesame street, education

• Spreading virus of literacy
  
• Learning epidemic through tv
  
• By making small adjustments in presentation it became sticky
  
• Direct marketers
  
• Blue's Clues
  
• Repetition
  

Ch 4 power of context part 1: rise and fall of NYC crime

• One of worst crime epidemics in 80s then fell all of a sudden
  
• Crime as epidemic
  
• Ppl very sensitive to context
  
• Broken windows theory
  
• Sense of anarchy
  
• Graffiti symbolic
  
• Cleaned all trains thoroughly
  
• Crackdown on fare cheating
  
• Small crimes were tipping points for violent crime
  
• Zimbardo prison: some situations overwhelm our natural state
  
• Honesty influenced by situation (studies of student cheating
  
• Fundamental attribution error: attribute wrongly to action or attributes instead of context
  
• Try to remove inconsistencies and cognitive dissonance
  
• Good samaritan experiment: only thing to alter behavior was context of whether were in a rush or not
  
• Community influence more important than family influence
  

Ch 5 power of context part 2: magic number 150

• Divine Secrets of Ya-Ya Sisterhood book sales tipped by word of mouth
  
• Context of a group changes everything
  
• Channel limit of being able to categorize among different groups; magic number 7
  
• Social channel capacity of number of good friends
  
• Dunbar: neocortex size for group management; humans 150
  
• 150 tipping point
  
• Gore Associates: small company feel thru rule 150; new plant building every 150 ppl; all depts know each other
  
• Hutterite clan splits at 150
  
• Couples form joint memory system
  

Ch 6 case study rumors

• Airwalk cult start
  
• Sponsored athletes
  
• TALC
  
• Mavens translate from visionaries to something more applicable
  
• Rumors distort and spread
  
• Most details dropped and some sharpened
  
• Ppl change to achieve better gestalt and meaning for them
  
• Follow a set of hip ppl around country and check in with them monthly to see what doing, thinking, wearing, goals
  
• Do ads showing ur product in the new trend ur starting to find
  
• Airwalk went down because sold off too much to mainstream
  

Ch 7: Case study on suicide and smoke

• Micronesia seven times higher suicide rate
  
• Part of culture
  
• Like teenage smoking in us
  
• Suicide and traffic fatalities surge for 5 days after big news suicide
  
• One suicide or deviant act gives permission to others to do same
  
• Suicide language between ppl in subculture
  
• Secret shared language of smoking, emotions, images
  
• Salesmen who give permission to smoke
  
• Teens drawn to traits of smokers (indifference to others, impulsivity, risk taking)
  
• Smokers, not smoking, cool
  
• But also sticky
  
• Contagiousness from messenger, stickiness from message
  
• Prevent permission givers from smoking
  
• Tell kids to look elsewhere for images
  
• Twin studies: half of personality from genes, half from environment
  
• Adopted kid study shows that environmental influence is peers not family
  
• New pills that fix depression by fixing brain chemicals help smokers quit by replacing high feelings
  
• Could also lower nicotine per cig so daily total dose below addictive level
  
• Like chippers who can smoke without addiction
  
• Experimentation/contagiousness is different than stickiness; few cocaine users try again
  
• Create safer less sticky form of smoking
  

Conclusion: focus, test, leave

• Sometimes band aid solution quick and dirty works great
  
• Our intuition of the world and differences among ppl not good: powerfully influenced by surroundings and small differences social change so volatile and inexplicable
  

Afterword

• Word of mouth
  
• Rise of isolation
  
• Columbine was infection that spread
  
• Mass hysteria
  


• Rise of immunity in communication
  
• Changes role of connector
  
• Email was great but now immune to it because such large network
  


• Role of maven
  
• Maven trap: 800 number on soap package
  
• Now defined by status among friends
  

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