The Tipping Point

I have recently read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, for Design Studies. The book describes how situations - 'epidemics' - happen, how they have a point where they 'tip', going from something not particularly popular to something extremely popular, a trend which everyone follows. Examples given of this are Hush Puppies, how they went from being a shoe noone wore, an 'uncool' shoe, to a shoe that designers were using, haute couture. And all this because of a few kids, who wanted to be cool and wore hush puppies simply because noone else did, because it made them individual, unique. Another example is suicide rates. How can one person commiting suicide start a craze? Its very strange but true, the rates of suicides go up in an area after one person in that area commits suicide. If someone famous commits suicide, the rates also go up. If someone young commits suicide, the number of young people in fatal road traffic accidents increases steadily for a few days before dropping, and the same goes for older people. This is the Tipping Point.

I chose to focus on the chapter 'The Power of Context'. I found this chapter very interesting as it goes into peoples' personalities, how they change. The way peoples' personalities change depending on where they are, who they are with, what situation they are in. A normally quiet person can change into a dictator type person, just by being given a small slice of power. This was proved in Stanford University's experiment, led by Philip Zimbardo, of making a 'prison' and putting people as gaurds and people as prisoners. The guards found that power went to their heads, the prisoners broke down, could not cope. The experiment was stopped after 6 days, although it was supposed to run for 2 weeks.

Unfortunatley I can't get to a scanner right now as I am ill, and photos turn out too blurry, so my mind maps will be up soon!