Catch The Hurl

The biggest recall of Coca-Cola in history occurred after 42 children in the Belgian town of Bornem became mysteriously ill after drinking it, leading to hospitalization. Two days later, eight more fell sick in Brugge, then 13 in Harelbeke the next day and 42 in Lochristi three days after that -- and on and on in a widening spiral that ultimately sent more than 100 children to the hospital complaining of nausea, dizziness, and headaches.

Problem was, the pop wasn't contaminated. It simply had an extra touch of a sulfuric compound barely large enough to taint the smell with a whiff of rotten eggs.

In short, kids got sick simply because other kids got sick, and not for any other significant medical reason.

Imagine how similarly contagious confidence could be!

What Smoking And Basketball Have In Common

The study continues regarding teen smoking:

"The significance of the smoking personality, I think, cannot be overstated. If you bundle all of these extroverts' traits together - defiance, sexual precocity, honesty, impulsiveness, indifference to the opinion of others, sensation seeking - you come up with an almost perfect definition of the kind of person many adolescents are drawn to.

Smoking was never cool. Smokers are cool." -- Malcolm Gladwell

This gets me thinking... how would this apply to being a YMCA middle school basketball coach?

Honesty... indifference to the opinion of others... those are traits of a person who's confident in who they are, and doesn't waste time trying to get others to like them, or trying to convince others why their way is the best. The deal is to minimize the talk, get to the action, and get results.

Smoking Study

"Smoking, overwhelmingly, was associated with the same thing to nearly everyone: sophistication." -- Malcolm Gladwell

The study found that people chose to smoke, despite the negative health factors, because of the personality of the people they saw smoking. To smoke was to be rebellious, worry-free, thin, etc. It goes to show how impactful a role model can be.

Get Me A Peer

"Peer pressure is much more powerful than the concept of a boss. Many, many times more powerful. People want to live up to what is expected of them." -- Jim Buckley

Buckley's comment supported the idea that work units should generally be less than 150 people in size. A small group with clear goals increases the sense of accountability, rather than a large corporation.

The Average Samaritan

A psychological study took a collection of seminary students and asked them to prepare a spontaneous talk in a nearby building. Half of the students were asked to give their presentation on the importance of clergy to churches, and half were asked to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan. Within each of these two groups, half were told that they were a few minutes late and had better get moving to the other building, and the other half were told that they had some extra time but they might as well head over early. Then a man was stationed in an alley that they would pass through, groaning and coughing on the ground.

Who helped the man?

It turns out that the topic of the presentation made little difference. The key factor was lateness. 63% of those "ahead of time" stopped to help, but only 10% who were "late" -- even among those seminary students who were about to present the parable of the Good Samaritan!

I can't condemn -- I did the same thing. This weekend, Dena and I were out for a walk on the trail when we walked past a young lady in a running outfit who looked physically weary, almost woozy, on the hot day. Did we stop? On we walked. It's amazing how quickly the mind searches for reasons not to help, instead of taking joy in the chance to simply ask if help is needed. We'll have to work a little harder to graduate from Samaria.

Staying Out Of Prison

A group of social scientists set up a mock prison in the basement of the university's psychology building. Twenty-one volunteers from seventy-five applicants who appeared the most normal and healthy on psychological tests were chosen. Half were randomly designated as prisoners, the others as guards. Almost immediately, each side was drawn into their respective roles -- the guards inflicting sadistic intimidation measures, the prisoners losing their identity and striking back. The experiment, designed to last two weeks, was halted after six days.

The moral: Put yourself into the environment that's healthiest for you! Few of us are actually prisoners to our current situation. Our environment can bring the best or worst out of us. Our choices make us into what we become.

Storytell 'em

The original Sesame Street show was, by design, an unconnected collection of sketches. Prevailing psychology of the 1960's said that a preschooler couldn't follow an extended narrative. But that idea's since been turned on its head. Three year olds may not be able to follow complicated subplots, but the narrative form is absolutely central to them. -- Malcolm Gladwell

Sometimes I read these and wonder if there's much difference between kids and adults. Storytelling books like the "Chicken Soup" series or Harry Potter series fly off the shelves. Popular sermons are filled with parables.

I once sat through a sixty minute presentation before a room full of top community leaders. These people live in the moment, are high achievers with focus. But this yawner of a Power Point presentation was over sixty slides long (in fact, only forty had been covered by the time it was mercifully shut down) and filled with scientific jargon. The saddest part was that the topic was special education, rich with opportunity to paint verbal success stories. That same group had earlier been riveted by a two-hour presentation -- from the county coroner. The difference was that the coroner brought several case studies, led the class through a detective-like activity, basically made dealing with dead bodies seem terribly interesting.

No matter what the message, those who can tell stories can captivate a room. Those who can't, can put one to sleep.

Who Says Kids Can't Multi-Task?

"As you would expect, the kids in the room without the toys watched the show playing on the T.V. about 87 percent of the time, while the kids with the toys watched only about 47 percent of the show. Kids are distracted by toys. But when they tested the two groups to see how much of the show the children remembered and understood, the scores were exactly the same. This result stunned the researchers. Kids, they realized, were a great deal more sophisticated in the way they watched than had been imagined. 'We were led to the conclusion,' they wrote, 'that five-year-olds in the toys group were attending quite strategically, distributing their attention between toy play and viewing so that they looked at what for them were the most informative parts of the program. This strategy was so effective that the children could gain no more from increased attention.'" -- Malcolm Gladwell

I've got a staff meeting on Monday morning. I'm bringing my toys!

Gold Box

Columbia Records advertising had been an abject failure. Then in 1977 they launched what they called the "gold box" campaign. A series of T.V. commercials told the "secret of the Gold Box." Viewers were told that if they could find the gold box in their issues of Parade and TV Guide magazines, they could write in the name of any record on the Columbia list and get that record free.

The ploy was wildly successful! It drew viewers into the game. People love to play. Give them an excuse to, and find success.

The Best Infection

In a study which measured how well test subjects could influence other people to do things, one observation was:

"If the charismatic person started out depressed, and the inexpressive person started out happy, by the end of the two minutes the inexpressive person was depressed as well. But it didn't work the other way. Only the charismatic person could infect the other people in the room with his or her emotion."

"The thing that strikes me most about my encounter with [the charismatic person] was his voice. He had the range of an opera singer. At times, he would sound stern. At times, he would drawl, lazily and easily. At other times, he would chuckle as he spoke, making his words sing with laughter." -- Malcolm Gladwell

A theory is that people of all ages have short attention spans. So it takes inflection to gain infection!