Tipping Point Questions #3 [Pg. 133-216]
1. What does the Power of Context reveal about epidemics?
2. What is the Broken Windows theory, and how did it contribute to crime in New York City?
3. How did Chief William Bratton enforce the Broken Windows theory among the transit police?
4. Name three details of Goetz's life that may have helped trigger his explosion on the subway.
5. How does Broken Windows theory differ from the prevailing notions of "criminal type"?
6. Why did Philip Zimbardo's experiment have to be stopped after 6 days?
7. Why did Hartshorne and May conclude that honesty is not a unified trait?
8. What is the Fundamental Attribution Error, and why are people generally reliant on it in judging other people?
9. What was the only factor that mattered in whether a seminarian would help a man in obvious distress?
10. What does the Power of Context say about the role of families in influencing the behavior of juveniles?
11. What does Gladwell point out as the subtle difference between Paul revere and John Wesley?
12. What is the relationship between channel capacity and telephone numbers?
13. What did Robin Dunbar find the correlation was between animals and the size of their neocortex?
14. What is significant about the number 150 according to Robin Dunbar?
15. What is Bill Gross's observation in his experience with the Hutterites when groups exceeded more than 150 people?
16. What does Daniel Wegner say that people do when they know each other well?
17. What, according to Gladwell, is the paradox of an epidemic?
18. What five basic groups does Gladwell invoke in explaining epidemic curves, and at what point (during which group) does the tipping point usually occur?
19. What special, but specific role does Gladwell see Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen play in the life of a social epidemic?
20. What are the three kinds of distortion that are present in the spreading of rumors and how does each one work?
Extra Credit: What is Dee Dee Gordon's explanation for why some innovative ideas don't go mainstream?