The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell attempts to explain how epidemics come about. Whether it’s a fashion statement, children’s television show, criminal behavior, or STD, their virality share similar traits. These characteristics being that trends are started by a minority of people, the behavior is sticky, and everything happens under the right context.  Published in 2000, the book shows its age with references to fax machines and now controversial news stories.

The 80/20 rule in economics is that 80% of a work is done by 20% of people. When it comes to epidemics, there is a smaller minority of people who are most influencing change and their roles are connectors, salespeople, and mavens.

Connectors are people who have an expansive network of people and are more connected than most. In a 1960 experiment, Stanley Milgram gave 160 people in Nebraska a packet for someone in Massachusetts that they had to deliver through mutual acquaintances. It was discovered that the packages took 5-6 steps to get to the final person. Half of the packets went through the same three people. These connectors are the nexus of a social circle. They catalyze word of mouth. Paul Revere, on his infamous ride, was acting as a connector.

Mavens are people who accumulate knowledge in areas that interest them the most and are socially motivated to share it. They read consumer reports, call customer helplines, and do research in the weeds to find the best product, deal, etc. around. They get satisfaction from sharing this knowledge and keep entities like companies on their toes from pulling a fast one on general consumers.

Salesmen are people who are very persuasive, sometimes very subtly, and can influence emotion. These are influencers, people with large audiences, or people with an ear to a connector.

The stickiness factor is how memorable or addictive something is. With something like a virus, the stickiness factor is how long a person is contagious for. This factor helped curate what Sesame Street segments were good to on air by having episodes tested with kids being asked to recall what they saw. Epidemics can only spread if they are sticky enough for people to retain and transmit it.

The power of context refers to how context can modify behavior and change meaning. The broken window theory suggests that unkept environments invite crime and poor behavior. One test conducted to see how much context can influence behavior was the infamous Stanford prison experiment where the setting of a makeshift prison turned normal people into abusive guards and rebellious inmates. Hartshorne and May conducted experiments on school children to find is some were more likely to cheat by testing students in different environments that have different availability of cheating. The results found that students’ behavior depended on the situation with there not being a clear group of cheating students. This suggests that cheating is not an inherit trait like people think. An explanation for people thinking they can correctly profile people based on situational behavior is that people are a lot more attuned to personal cues than contextual ones.

I agree with Gladwell that situational behavior is often mistaken for personal traits, but I also think this rule has some bend. After all, people can be prone to exhibit violent tendencies more often than others. If you put an anti-social person in a social environment like a club, they’re not likely to be more social. Personality traits do exist, and I think Gladwell underplays that in order to make this finding more impactful.

Gladwell also references the case of Kitty Genovese and how none of the 38 witnesses did anything to contact the authorities while she was murdered. This was debunked in 2007, long after publication. The other controversial story Gladwell uses was about a flight attendant with AIDs that spread the virus by being more promiscuous than typical. Gladwell’s statements were not incorrect and most disdain toward the story seems to stem from misinterpretations of the original findings.

Gladwell references Crossing the Chasm when explaining adoption of corn seeds in Green County, Iowa. To support his argument that behavior is less about personality he quotes Walter Mischel whose explanation sounded very similar to Rick Rubin prism analogy.

The book has relevance in the way people think but technology has changed human interaction so much that the framework provided seems incompatible with today’s world. I had to ask myself if mavens existed. If they do, are they as available as they were. With constant virality due to the internet, are they now all also connectors? Soon I will read Gladwell’s 2024 follow up to this book to see if any of this is addressed.