It only takes a small change in a small number to make a big change (Page 9)
Behavior Is Contagious
Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do. (Page 7)
The Effect Is Exponential
We are trained to think that what goes into any transaction or relationship or system must be directly related, in intensity and dimension, to what comes out. (Page 10)
Context Decides Behavior
The criminal... is actually someone acutely sensitive to his environment, who is alert to all kinds of cues, and who is prompted to commit crimes based on his perception of the world around him. (Page 150)
Does It Stick
The stickiness factor explains how well a change or message remains in people's minds. (Page 29)
Traits Are Overestimated, Situations Are Underestimated
The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of the situation and context. (Page 160)
Evolution Is Based on Small Group Interactions
As the evolutionary biologist S. L. Washburn writes: Most of human evolution took place before the advent of agriculture, when men lived in small groups, on a face-to-face basis. As a result human biology has evolved as an adaptive mechanism to conditions that have largely ceased to exist. Man evolved to feel strongly about few people, short distances, and relatively brief intervals of time, and these are still the dimensions of life that are important to him. (Page 177)
Character Is Just Our Tendencies
Character isn't a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment. (Page 163)
Activity Builds Bonds
Another study, done on students at the University of Utah, found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he'll say it is because he and his friend share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the two of them on their attitudes, you'll find out that what they actually share is similar activities. We're friends with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble. We don't seek out friends, in other words. We associate with the people who occupy the same small, physical spaces that we do. (Page 35)
Oversimplification is a Feature, Not a Bug
The psychologist Walter Mischel argues that the human mind has a kind of "reducing valve" that "creates and maintains the perception of continuity even in the face of perpetual observed changes in actual behavior. (Page 162)
