IRB Intro Post #3- The Tipping Point

Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker, bestselling author, and speaker. He has written five different books, all of which ending up on the New York Times Best Sellers list. In his nonfiction piece, The Tipping Point, Gladwell introduces us to the butterfly effect or, as some prefer, the domino effect, in which one event can lead to something else on a much larger scale. We hear these often, in matters of cause and effect or ‘everything happens for a reason’. However, we never consider how far back something could go, whether the flap of a wing of a butterfly could really cause a tornado elsewhere, or if that bad grade on the test in junior year will really come back to haunt you in your adulthood career. In a Q&A, Gladwell calls his book “a book about change” that presents a new way of understanding why change happens so quickly and unexpectedly. He plans on analyzing the social epidemics that have erupted over time, such as the increase of teen smoking or decrease of crime in 1990s New York City. His goal for writing the book is to help people recognize the pattern that emerges from these butterfly effects and easily find sources of cause and effects. Despite being an in-the-moment person, I tend to also have curiosities and constant questionings of ‘where did that even come from?’ As a person also trying to put together novels and stories, I hope that I may be able to use this to my advantages in order to make a successful plot. For a book that has settled itself on the New York Times Best Sellers list, I hope that I’m not disappointed with the content within the book. However, I find that books concerning matters that I’m not familiar with often go over my head, so hopefully this is something that can keep a hold of my attention span and introduce me to a world I am unfamiliar with.

TOW #16 - The Lucifer Effect

Written by the man who organized the Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil is an intriguing analysis of what ultimately changes people from good to bad. Zimbardo continues to use personal anecdotes and historical allusions in order to help put together theories as to why evil develops within seemingly normal people. Analyzing his own experiment, Zimbardo writes "The power of this situation ran swiftly and deeply through most of those on this exploratory ship of human nature. Only a few were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency," (4147). As a psychologist. Zimbardo's words establish a predetermined sense of ethos among his obervations. Also, there is less bias in his observations, as he is using the actual data of how many people reacted negatively towards  how people reacted positively. However, Zimbardo fails to specify where the line between morality and evil lies in his research. It's a very objective perspective, so had he specified his limitations, that would have been much easier to comprehend. At the beginning of every few sections, Zimbardo also makes sure to remind the readers of the prevalence of the developing evils using historical allusions. He once says "More than 50 million people have been systematically murdered by government decrees, enacted by soldiers and civilian forces willing to carry out the kill orders..." (433) and proceeds to list a copious amounts of events in which this statement is relevant. This provides a sense of realism to an idea that seems so unrealistic, even in the namesake. Even for those who may not believe in actual evils or the 'lucifer effect', they are given proof that this is prevalent enough of a topic to develop a sense of curiosity about. I think the Lucifer Effect does a brilliant job of executing an out of the box idea to a universal audience, pulling multiple perspectives underneath his wing in order to project his views forward.

TOW #15- No Smoking

This is an advertisement made by the Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program which promotes a tobacco-free society. The image depicts a young woman who has a cigarette in her mouth. The portion which is touching the cigarette directly is turning purple, and almost appears to be turning her old. Her teeth also appear to be rotting and turning yellow. This develops the idea of a decomposing or sickly figure, connecting the idea to cigarettes. This makes the viewer believe that smoking cigarettes results in this disfigured image. The contrast between the healthy side of the face and the sickly side causes the viewer to instantaneously compare the two and choose which one they would rather have. The obvious answer is that they would prefer the right half of the image. The text that is considered important is bold and written in a way that a magazine would write it, such as having eye catching titles to for wait loss or new makeup looks. In this case, it addresses cigarettes indirectly in the text by saying 'quit'. However, the text does not direction mention quit. It makes the reader develop the connection themselves between the fact that cigarettes do not make someone look better. Considering the style of this advertisement, which is similar to a fashion magazine cover, this advertisement seems to have an audience directed towards women, who may be worried more about how they look as they age. Overall, I think this is rather effective and eye catching with its techniques. It is also well placed with the time, as the amount of women smoking is slowly increasing. This is a good way to discourage them from doing so. I'd be interesting in seeing any advertisements that this program may develop directed to men, as it may be significantly different from the women's advertisements.

TOW #14- The Joy of Psyching Myself Out

Maria Konnikova is a writer and journalist who primarily writes about psychology and literature. In her op-ed piece ‘The Joy of Psyching Myself Out’, she compares her experience as a psychologist to her experience as a writer. Originally, she claims that she feared that the transition from a psychologist to a writer would be rather severe. However, she comes to the conclusion that the two are surprisingly similar in their methodology, following the ideas of making scenarios and predicting results. The only difference is how you execute your ‘experiment’.

To advocate her ideas, Konnikova turns mostly to allusions to famous scientists that any psychologist would be able to recognize. Many of these names include William James, Sigmund Freud, and Anton Chekhov. The quotes that she provides from each all circle around her ideas, such as Chekhov’s quote from 1887, “A writer must be as objective as a chemist… He must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dung heaps play a very reasonable part in a landscape.” This particular quote draws a connection to the two seemingly different careers. On one end, all of the theories are for stories and stories alone, to create a book. On the other, all of the theories are to be tested so that we can put together conclusions about the human mind. However, the connection in between are the obstacles that are put forth in order to create these conclusions that will hopefully come to make a similar impact.

Konnikova often turns to the contrasting elements of objective (which was the primary influence in her psychology career) and intrinsic (the primary influence in her writing career) values. Describing her psychology career, she often complains that she felt restrained by the need to devise experiments and consider every detail that went into them technically and financially. Despite turning to writing as a way to escape the objective career, Konnikova reveals that within the intrinsic interest, the thinking process that came from the psychology career never left. So in reality, the two ended up to be surprisingly similar to each other.

I believe that Konnikova put forth an interesting idea into the argument whether or not creativity and science can live hand in hand. While the two are so seemingly different, Konnikova puts forth a personal anecdote in order to offer her perspective. I believe her allusions to other psychologists definitely called out to any psychologist that may be reading the piece. However, the simplistic descriptions that she used throughout definitely allowed those who may not be so in tune with psychology to join into the conversation.