Common belief in today’s world is most likely based on an individual’s behavior such as upbringing, personal crime history, personality, etc. These factors might seem reasonable and logical but is it these factor or is it just merely the idea of nature vs nurture? In “The Power of Context” by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell examines the role of the environment and its impact on one’s decisions and behaviors. He does this through three key broad ideas: the Power of the Context, the Law of the Few, and the Stickiness Factor. The Power of Context is a theory that focus on one’s behavior in relation to one’s environment or as psychologist would say nature versus nurture. For instance, this can be seen in the Goetz’s case. Goetz was an average subway
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It is said to be that behaviors and trends can quickly spread like wild fire in society and become common. The environment provides certain “tipping points” which act as organizers for human decisions. For example, the decision to commit a crime is like to happen in vandalized and worn-down neighborhoods, while clean and up-scale environments motivates people to comply with the law and social norms. Moreover, many choices contributing to personal qualities and traits are in fact largely depended on the context rather than the conscious choices made by human beings. “The Tipping Point in this epidemic, though isn’t a particular kind of person…It’s something physical like graffiti. The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior is not coming from a certain kind of person but form a feature of the environment” (Gladwell 152). The graffiti, in this article, was symbolic to the subway system because it was how criminals sent their message to the city of New York. However, when the subway system began to clean up its past, many vandals still do it until it became virtually impossible to paint anymore. By means of that, “we knew the kids would be working on one of the dirty trains, and what we would do is wait for them to finish their mural. Then we’d walk over with rollers and paint it over. The kids would be in tears, but we’d just be going up and …show more content…
This could be seen through the Good Samaritan study. This study shows that there is a ten percent chance of a good seminarians rushing to help an injured person and a sixty-three percent chance of a student with spare time helping others in need. Gladwell maintains that the time constraint made “Someone who was ordinarily compassionate into someone who was indifferent to suffering – of turning someone, in that particular moment, into a different person” (161). While the study is very convincing of Gladwell’s assertion, ten percent of the students in a rush were able to break out of the situation’s submission hold and help the broken man, the majority of the people tend to yield to the power of context. Thus, the rare heroic type is unable to be bound by anything other than his or her own will disproving Gladwell’s conjecture of the Good Samaritan.
Thus, Gladwell’s uses these methods to not only convince the reader but also to convey his opinion. One example of this would be when he proposed an idea to explain the phenomenon that occurred when the sudden period of intense repair of crime-infested New York City was able to decline the crime rate. This example not only painted a vivid picture of New York City during the 1980s but also captured the reader’s
It is said to be that behaviors and trends can quickly spread like wild fire in society and become common. The environment provides certain “tipping points” which act as organizers for human decisions. For example, the decision to commit a crime is like to happen in vandalized and worn-down neighborhoods, while clean and up-scale environments motivates people to comply with the law and social norms. Moreover, many choices contributing to personal qualities and traits are in fact largely depended on the context rather than the conscious choices made by human beings. “The Tipping Point in this epidemic, though isn’t a particular kind of person…It’s something physical like graffiti. The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior is not coming from a certain kind of person but form a feature of the environment” (Gladwell 152). The graffiti, in this article, was symbolic to the subway system because it was how criminals sent their message to the city of New York. However, when the subway system began to clean up its past, many vandals still do it until it became virtually impossible to paint anymore. By means of that, “we knew the kids would be working on one of the dirty trains, and what we would do is wait for them to finish their mural. Then we’d walk over with rollers and paint it over. The kids would be in tears, but we’d just be going up and …show more content…
This could be seen through the Good Samaritan study. This study shows that there is a ten percent chance of a good seminarians rushing to help an injured person and a sixty-three percent chance of a student with spare time helping others in need. Gladwell maintains that the time constraint made “Someone who was ordinarily compassionate into someone who was indifferent to suffering – of turning someone, in that particular moment, into a different person” (161). While the study is very convincing of Gladwell’s assertion, ten percent of the students in a rush were able to break out of the situation’s submission hold and help the broken man, the majority of the people tend to yield to the power of context. Thus, the rare heroic type is unable to be bound by anything other than his or her own will disproving Gladwell’s conjecture of the Good Samaritan.
Thus, Gladwell’s uses these methods to not only convince the reader but also to convey his opinion. One example of this would be when he proposed an idea to explain the phenomenon that occurred when the sudden period of intense repair of crime-infested New York City was able to decline the crime rate. This example not only painted a vivid picture of New York City during the 1980s but also captured the reader’s