What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". Literally How to use a word that literally drives some pe Is Singular 'They' a Better Choice? The awkward case of 'his or her'. Take the quiz. Our Favorite New Words How many do you know? True or False? Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something a The law of the few is a law about the structure of our social network and how messages are passed through word of mouth. It attempts to classify three important types of people who affect the rapid spread of messages through the network.
These three types of people are connectors, mavens, and salesmen. Connectors are the socialites. They are people with many friends and acquaintances who spend time maintaining these connections. From the network perspective, these are the most central nodes in the social network. Gladwell devised a simple test which allowed him to determine that the number of connections a person has is measured by a power law.
This means that connectors are rare in society, but they maintain many more times the number of relationships than the average person does. Because of their ability to spread a message to a huge number of people quickly, connectors are central to understanding how tipping points are reached.
Mavens are the information gatherers of the social network. They evaluate the messages that come through the network and they pass their evaluations on to others, along with the messages. We can view mavens as regulators of the network because they have the power to control what flows through the network. We trust mavens, and this is especially important because their assessments can often make or break the tipping of an epidemic.
Mavens drive many of our social institutions. They are the people who inform the better business bureau, regulate prices, write letters to senators, etc.
Though Gladwell does not argue this explicitly, his description of mavens suggests that mavens can be specialized in areas of expertise and thus many of us may be mavens in our particular areas of interest. Salesmen are what the name implies. They are persuaders who are capable of propagating messages through the force of their character. Thus, regardless of the message content or their expertise in the area, they have a certain ability to sell which helps them move messages which may be of importance to them.
This ability to persuade strangers to accept a message is why salesmen are important in tipping epidemics. The Stickiness Factor is a law about the actual informational content and packaging of a message. Connections and the personal character of the people trying to spread a message can certainly help it spread, but if the message is not worth spreading, then it is doomed to failure.
The stickiness factor says that messages must have a certain character which causes them to remain active in the recipients' minds. Moreover, they must be deemed worthy of being passed on.
Gladwell admits that the exact characteristics of a message which make it sticky are very difficult to pin down. The stickiness of a message can often only be determined by testing and experimentation. In most of the examples which Gladwell provides, he shows that people often find that their initial belief in the correct packaging for a message is not optimal. The message must be repacked and tweaked several times before tiny changes cause the message to become sticky.
The law of context is a rule about the environment in which a message spreads. Small changes in the context of a message can determine whether or not it tips. Thus, these social epidemics can fail if the geographic location where they are introduced is wrong or if the current mental state of the population is not prepared for the message.
Gladwell also points out the importance of small groups for the distribution of messages. He argues that the maximum number of members that can reasonably exist in a human group is one hundred and fifty. He believes that biological limitations in our brain mean that any group larger than this will automatically segment into factions and decrease efficiency.
The existence of small groups helps the spread of a message because each member of the group knows every other one and thus the message can easily diffuse through the whole group. The Tipping Point is not a scientific text with extensive citations, formal definitions and experimental research to justify its position.
It relies on rhetoric and examples to provide its justification for the positions espoused within. As such, I don't believe that Gladwell would assert that he has proven that these three rules are the best or only rules which govern epidemics. The attainment of the tipping point that transforms a phenomenon into an influential trend usually requires the intervention of a number of influential types of people.
In the disease epidemic model Gladwell introduced in Chapter 1, he demonstrated that many outbreaks could be traced back to a small group of infectors.
Likewise, on the path toward the tipping point, many trends are ushered into popularity by small groups of individuals that can be classified as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. An interesting element of stickiness, as defined by Gladwell, is the fact that it is often counterintuitive, or contradictory to the prevailing conventional wisdom.
If the environment or historical moment in which a trend is introduced is not right, it is not as likely that the tipping point will be attained. To illustrate the power of context, Gladwell takes on the strangely rapid decline in violent crime rates that occurred in the s in New York City. Although Gladwell acknowledges that a wide variety of complex factors and variables likely played a role in sparking the decline, he argues convincingly that it was a few small but influential changes in the environment of the city that allowed these factors to tip into a major reduction in crime.
He cites the fact that a number of New York City agencies began to make decisions based on the Broken Windows theory, which held that minor, unchecked signs of deterioration in a neighborhood or community could, over time, result in major declines in the quality of living. To reverse these trends, city authorities started focusing on seemingly small goals like painting over graffiti, cracking down on subway toll skippers, and dissuading public acts of degeneracy.
Gladwell contends that these changes in the environment allowed the other factors, like the decline in crack cocaine use and the aging of the population, to gradually tip into a major decline in the crime rate in the city.
Clearly, in order for a trend to tip into massive popularity, large numbers of people need to embrace it. However, Gladwell points out that groups of certain sizes and certain types can often be uniquely conducive to achieving the tipping point. He traces the path of the novel The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood from regional cult favorite to national best-seller.
Gladwell notes that the unique content of the novel appealed strongly to reading groups of middle-aged women in Northern California, and that these women were uniquely well-positioned to catapult the book to national success as a result of an informal campaign of recommendations and advocacy. Gladwell also remarks upon the unusual properties tied to the size of social groups. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights.
Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. By Ashley Crossman. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Crossman, Ashley. Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point". Biography of Malcolm Gladwell, Writer. What Is Hyperpluralism? Definition and Examples. What Is Socialism? Social Constructionism Definition and Examples.
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