Power Of Context Analysis

When you are asked to describe the developments of one’s personality, one would acknowledge that childhood experiences and surroundings shape who they become. One’s character is built throughout their entire life, carrying with us different experiences and ways of thinking. Malcolm Gladwell, in “The Power of Context,” emphasizes the theory that the roles of the environment can impact the decisions and behaviors of human beings. And this is shown in, Steven Johnson’s, “The Myth of the Ant Queens” and Karen Ho’s, “Biographies of Hegemony.” It is said that, that a decision to commit a crime is more likely to emerge in disordered and vandalized environment, while an orderly and clean environment motivates people to adhere to social norms. Both small-scale and large-scale …show more content…
The Power of Context illustrates that a person’s environment in all circumstances and influences surrounding one person, affects one’s development. During the Zimbardo experiment, he decides to create a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University, allowing half to be prisoners and the others to be guards. The purpose of this experiment was to figure out why prisons are a nasty place. “Was it because prisons are full of nasty people, or was it because prisons are such nasty environments that they make people nasty” (Gladwell 158)? The Power of Context applies to this small-scale situation, it showed that being in the environment such as a prison, starts to affect the characteristics of an individual. For example, prisoners reported they were losing their identity and it felt like a real prison. The environment started to play with the emotions and actions of one individual, causing guards to punish the prisoners every morning and prisoners wanting to rebel against them creating chaos. Similarly, Ho suggests that due to attending an elite status university, it can cause the students to alter their interest and personality. During the recruitment process of obtaining a job on Wall