Chapter 4. The Power of Context (Part One): Bernie Goetz & the Rise & Fall of New York City Crime
1. Who is Bernhard Goetz? The Subway Vigilante. He shot four men on the subway who asked for money. He assumed he was being robbed, felt threatened and shot them. Seemed like a little overkill to me, but I get where he was coming from.
2. Describe New York City in the 1980s—specifically crime and public transportation. According to Gladwell, what tipped the NYC crime epidemic? The crime rate was horrendous-2000 murders per year. The public transportation was in disarray. The subways were dark and slow, the cars were either not running or were covered in graffiti. There were about 15,000 felonies a year due to subway conditions.
3. Explain the Broken Windows theory. The Broken Windows theory says that if conditions seem ripe for crime, it is more likely to happen. If a window remains broken, people assume no one is watching or cares if something else gets broken or stolen. This is like a classroom where the teacher tried to be nice too much and didn’t set expectations. The students assume they can get away with poor behavior so they continue to behave badly.
4. Do you agree that “behavior is a function of social context” and that “what really matters is little things” (on page 150)? I think there is a lot of validity about the social context behavior. Children behave quite differently at school than they do at home. Expectations are different. I behave differently at school than I do in my part-time job at Walmart. At school, I am expected to be a role model to others. At Walmart, I am a lowly peon-I don’t have to always be perfect. The little things also do matter. I had a class with a boy who was constantly working on being the center of attention. The whole class misbehaved right along with him. He moved and now the whole class behaves better. The stimulus for misbehavior is gone.
5. How did David Gunn, the new subway director, put the Broken Window theory into effect in New York City? He started by cleaning up the graffiti. By not allowing the graffiti-covered trains to run, he sent a message that graffiti wouldn’t be tolerated.
6. How did the new head of the transit police, William Bratton, aid Gunn with the Broken Window theory? He started on the fare-beating and made it clear that arrests would be made. He made public examples of abusers of the system and got the police on his side by making numerous arrests of people with previous records or with weapons.
7. Describe the prison experiment. What do you make of the results? I believe the results were valid. I read once about a teacher who experimented in class-one day the blue-eyed children were the chosen ones and the brown-eyed children were the non-chosen. By the end of the experiment, the blue eyes were bossy and condescending-the brown eyes were depressed and defeated. Add a lack of identity, prison walls and weapons and I can see how it could turn into what the book described.
8. What effect does birth order have on personality? None, except when you are with your family.
9. What is the Good Samaritan research and what do you think of it? They did an experiment with students in a seminary. They had to walk past a guy sick in the streets and see if they would stop and help. I tried to guess which group would stop and help the man. I guessed correctly that the time issue would be a factor. What upsets me is that people who are in the seminary should have at least taken a minute to make sure the guy was not dying. However, many muggers will pretend to be ill to stop their victims. How do we know if the seminarians had past issues that shaped their responses?
10 .Gladwell states that “…our inner states are the result of our outer circumstances” (on page 152).Do you believe that environment truly makes an impact on our actions? Yes, I do. Herd behavior is alive and well. Look at the fare-beaters. I imagine many of those people did not believe in stealing, yet they figured everyone else was doing it, so why not? Normally quiet people may start screaming when they are at a concert where everyone around them is screaming.
11. How do you define character?Look at how Gladwell defines it on page 163.Compare and contrast your thoughts to his. Gladwell believes that character is a bundle of habits and tendencies, loosely bound together and dependent on circumstances and context. I agree to a point but I also believe that your underlying moral character can surface despite the circumstances. I do not believe I would be a fare-beater because of my upbringing in a Christian environment. Also, I do not want to be arrested-doesn’t sound like fun to me.
12. Do you follow your convictions and thoughts or the immediate context of your behavior?Give an example or two. I hope I follow my convictions but I know I have done things based on where I was and who I was with. I can’t think of many examples but one I remember vividly. I was in a play in college and everyone in the cast smoked. I hate smoking-the smell and taste makes me ill. But, one night during break, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. I had smoked a couple of puffs before I realized what I was doing. It rather scared me-I knew I didn’t smoke, didn’t want to smoke, yet here I was smoking because everyone around me was doing it.
Chapter 5. The Power of Context (Part Two): The Magic Number of One Hundred and Fifty
1. How did the Ya-Ya Sisterhood tip? Mostly through book clubs. The members bought multiple copies for their friends and they started talking about the book. Then they started sharing their lives with one another and daughters brought their mothers and daughters.
2. What is channel capacity? It means that the brain only has so much capacity for different areas, like we can only memorize phone numbers because there are 7 numbers. Any more numbers and there would be larger amounts of wrong numbers.
3. What is Robin Dunbar’s argument about brain evolution? He believes the brain grows bigger in response to need. When you add more people to a group or more food to your diet, your brain grows larger in order to deal with the new information.
4. What is the Rule of 150 and how do Gladwell’s examples support the validity of this rule? The rule of 150 says that any group over 150 becomes too large to be a successful community. He cited an army group and a religious community group that verified this fact. The religious group would split when they got too large or else they started getting into cliques or clans within the group. Armies have had small groups for years even though communication skills are so much more advanced. I think it is a valid rule-I had a class of 400 when I graduated. I didn’t view all of those people as my community-it was too large. I only got to know those with common interests as I.
5. How did Gore become and stay so successful as a business? He uses the Rule of 150. He keeps each plant small and so therefore each associate knows all the people they work with. He does not have bosses-each member is considered equal. Peer pressure is used to keep people doing their best work.
6. Is Gore Associates a company more businesses should model? Do you think we’d see less corruption and job dissatisfaction if more companies subscribed to the Rule of 150 and Gore Associates’ philosophy?I think we would. I work at Walmart and I see how becoming a big business has changed the company. Sam Walton had many good ideas-he believed that all employees were valuable and should take part in decisions. The management now is different. Decisions are made in Bentonville and all stores operate the same. There are so many levels of ‘bosses’ that it is easy to get confused about who to even talk to about any issue. The fun has gone out of the job-it’s not a family-run organization.
7. What is transactive memory? Do you believe in the idea of family memory sharing? Examine your own family and see if the process holds true. Transactive memory means that not all of your memory is stored in your head. You store the knowledge of where to find the answers somewhere else. I definitely believe in family memory sharing. My daughter lives in Omaha with her family and I still call her to ask if I have a certain movie. She is in charge of my video knowledge and she has been married for 7 years! She even knows more about movies I bought recently than I do.
8. Take Gladwell’s quiz: List all the people you know whose death would leave you devastated. Does your list fall in line with Gladwell’s assumption about groups and time? My list is rather small. I think the time thing is valid-I work about 70 hours a week and have less time than most to form social groups. Most of my group is family-the others are coworkers who have been at the same school with me since I started teaching.
9. Think of groups you belong or belonged to. Do they fit into the Rule of 150? Describe each group’s dynamics. Would each group function better if it followed to the Rule of 150? I already talked about one group in question 6. As a company, Walmart is too big. Our individual store, however, has less than 150 employees. We do tend to know each other and try to help out one another. My church is an example of more than 150. Our church has gotten so large that we have three services. We are not the tight-knit group that we were 15 years ago. I used to know everyone and their families. Now we are all in smaller groups based on ages or family situations. I used to teach in two schools-one with about 180 students and the other had about 80 students. Big difference! The smaller school ran more efficiently-we didn’t have a principal on site. All the students knew each other and worked together.
