Shriya Rathi

The Tipping Point

The reading in this section was bit different, but still interesting.  It goes into the psychology of what happens when there is an emergency.  They did a study and when there were more people it was less likely that people would call 911 when they witnessed an emergency.  It comes down to the idea that people assume someone else will make that call, or that because no one else is calling it is not an emergency.  When they are less people however, it more likely someone will try to help.  I think this is interesting because often times you feel safer when you are in bigger crowds, but in reality people are less likely to come to you aid.  This has to do with the fact that when people are in a group they lose some sense of responsibility. Gladwell uses this interesting example to prove a bigger point about getting people to change their behavior. How can you make the person care about the person in need of help? ( according to the example).  Getting people to change their behavior lies with the small details in their immediate attention.  Gladwell calls this concept the power of context.  The power of context is the idea that human being are significantly more sensitive to their environment than they may seem.  What i took away from this is that people’s behaviors are  correlated with the environment they are in.  In order to make a certain type of impact you have to aware of this.