EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology

Critical Analysis of “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell

Labels: Sociology

“The Tipping Point,” by Malcolm Gladwell focuses on the way epidemics start and are spread. According to “The Tipping Point” anything can be explained as an epidemic, from the spread of fashion ideas, to the sudden success of a product, to the way propaganda changes thinking patterns and the way crime can take over a city and then suddenly disappear. Malcolm Gladwell uses numerous examples to show how epidemics have one or more tipping points, small and seemingly inconsequential triggers that cause them to take off. Along the way various individuals called Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen can be influential to make an epidemic spread faster, or they can act to stop an epidemic. “The Tipping Point” also shows how we as individuals can apply the concepts of epidemics, Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen to start our own epidemic.

New York City Subway Crime

I found Malcolm Gladwell's example of how New York City fought crime on the subway to be very interesting. During the 1980's to early 1990's the New York City subways were likened to Dante's Inferno because of the theft and murders that occurred in the trains and stations. Around that time criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling developed what they called the Broken Windows theory. This theory basically proposed that crime was the natural result of a disorder. If people see broken windows, trash, and minor crimes such as vandalism and graffiti they will naturally end up assuming that they can get away with worse crimes. Kelling applied this principal to clean up the New York City subways. Rather than trying to stop the murders and thefts on the subway system Kelling attacked the problem of graffiti. Next another follower of the Broken Windows theory, William Bratton, developed a system that cracked down on farebeating.

Farebeaters were arrested, chained together, and left in a line near the turnstiles until a full load had been caught. In these two simple ways Kelling and Bratton changed the atmosphere of the subway. Now it didn't look like the subway was a place where one could get away with crime. The trains were clean, and potential criminals had to walk past a daisy chain of arrested farebeaters every time they wanted to enter the subway. Suddenly the subways were no longer seemed like a convenient place to commit a crime. I definitely agree with the Broken Windows theory because it makes sense for people to be effected by their environment. An untidy, broken environment will make people frustrated and angry. It also makes them care less for their environment so that they don't mind ruining it even more. In this way it becomes an epidemic as one person vandalizes a train. Then other people start vandalizing trains. Eventually people start thinking that they don't want to pay $1.25 to ride the trashed out subway trains. People start farebeating because they don't feel that the subway is worth ...