R&R: Summary Chapter 4 of the Tipping Point

Chapter 4 of Malcolm Gladwell's the Tipping Point explains and describes the "Power of Context." First off in chapter 4 they talk about the "Broken Window Theory." This theory explains that the criminal" far from being someone who acts for fundamental, intrinsic reasons and who lives in his own world is actually someone acutely sensitive to his environment-who is alert to all cues, and who is prompted to commit crimes based on his perception of the world around him.

Later in the chapter Gladwell mentions the Prison expeiment that was done at Stanford University. A man part of the psychology department at the University created a mock prison in hopes to explain how prisons really work and the reason to why they are so nasty. The experiment proved to be a success they found how prison is just mentally cruel and after a while turns people's psychological ways of thinking to making these inmates even more crazy.

Next in the chapter Gladwell describes if cheating and lying are similar. Gladwell observes this situation in which there were a certain amount of tests to help prove whether many kids are cheating in schools now a days, and the numbers were staggering. With these tests they could come to the conclusion that there isn't any specific groups in school that lie and cheat and there is another group who doesn't many of the cheaters are spread out among different clicks of students throughout the schools. They also concluded that honesty isn't a fundamental trait but is what they call a "unified" trait.
Finally at the "part 5." of the chapter Gladwell talks about the story of the good samaritan and how people at Princeton University studied the bibles story of the good samaritan and how much it occurs in our society today and how it works.

Half way through the book now and starting to come down the homestretch of it.

--KP