Time needed to read Gladwell's Outliers (reasonably carefully, including the end notes): 2 hours. Favorite passage:
"We sat down and tried to figure out what is an insult that would go to the heart of an eighteen to twenty year-old's brain," Cohen says. "It didn't take too long to come up with 'asshole.' "
The experiment went like this. The social sciences building at the University of Michigan has a long, narrow hallway in the basement lined with filing cabinets. The young men were called into a classroom, one by one, and asked to fill out a questionnaire. Then they were told to drop off the questionnaire at the end of the hallway and return to the classroom --- a simple, seemingly innocent academic exercise.
For half the young men, that was it. They were the control group. For the other half, there was a catch. As they walked down the hallway with their questionnaire, a man --- a confederate of the experimenters --- walked past them and pulled out a drawer in one of the filing cabinets. The already narrow hallway now became even narrower. As the young men tried to squeeze by, the confederate looked up, annoyed. He slammed the filing cabinet drawer shut, jostled the young men with his shoulder, and in a low, but audible voice, said the trigger word, "Asshole."
The experiment went like this. The social sciences building at the University of Michigan has a long, narrow hallway in the basement lined with filing cabinets. The young men were called into a classroom, one by one, and asked to fill out a questionnaire. Then they were told to drop off the questionnaire at the end of the hallway and return to the classroom --- a simple, seemingly innocent academic exercise.
For half the young men, that was it. They were the control group. For the other half, there was a catch. As they walked down the hallway with their questionnaire, a man --- a confederate of the experimenters --- walked past them and pulled out a drawer in one of the filing cabinets. The already narrow hallway now became even narrower. As the young men tried to squeeze by, the confederate looked up, annoyed. He slammed the filing cabinet drawer shut, jostled the young men with his shoulder, and in a low, but audible voice, said the trigger word, "Asshole."
Somehow this seemed like a scene out of Curb Your Enthusiasm --- the experiment is meant to measure whether "southerners" (ie people from the south of the US) are more likely to get pissed off in this situation than "northerners." Later this study's conclusion is summarized
Call an southerner an asshole and he's itching for a fight.
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