LUCETE!

In the ‘Episode 5: Food Fight’ of the podcast ‘Revisionist History’, Malcolm Gladwell compares two similar schools, Bowdoin College and Vassar College. They are both small elite liberal arts colleges with similar tuition fees and Vassar is a little bigger and edgier than Bowdoin. The major difference between these schools is the quality of the food. Bowdoin College has wonderful food, which are handmade, delicious, and diverse. Sometimes there are lobsters in the menu and the students are highly satisfied with it. Vassar’s food is terrible and almost inedible. Where did this difference come from? After Princeton dramatically expanded its financial aid, Vassar realized that low-income children spend almost a half of their families’ income to pay for the tuition and expanded its aid from 15 thousand to 60 thousand, 10 years ago. As a result, full tuition paying students that were about 75-80% of the total number of students were replaced by about 100 poor students. Obviously, Vassar ...

There is a boy named Carlos., a poor intelligent child who is too mature for his age and likes math. He didn’t feel very challenged in school and now attends an elite private school with full scholarship. Then, now the main question is how did he get up the ladder? He received help from Eric Eisner’s YES program in Los Angeles, a program that identifies the most promising students, tutor them, and get them into private schools. While Carlos attended a fancy elementary school, thanks to the help of YES, he felt a bit self-conscious. He couldn’t play with others in recess because he wore shoes that two sizes large. Later, Carlos really wanted to go to Chode, but he couldn’t because his mother wouldn’t let him go. Carlos had to care of his mother and his sister. However, his mother gets imprisoned and Carlos and his sister had to live in messy foster homes. After all these difficulties, Carlos finally gets into a private school. The story may sound touching, even inspiring. No. This...

When people are in the crowd, they no longer act as individuals, but become a creature of the crowd. This is exactly what happened with Wilt Chamberlain and what Rick Berry survived from. In the ‘Revisionist History’ episode 3, ‘The Big Man Can’t Shoot’, Malcolm Gladwell explains about the threshold effect with the examples of Berry and Chamberlain. Although no one shot underhand and underhand shots were thought as ‘granny shots’, Rick Berry shot underhand and became a great free thrower. However, because of such peer pressure, another basketball player named Wilt Chamberlain quitted shooting underhand. What makes smart people do dumb things? Why does people do something that is out of their characters? At first, sociologists thought that it is because a strong force, the crowd changes one’s belief. Mark Granovetter explains it in another way. He says, “It’s not about people having belief about what’s right and that belief changing because of the crowd. It’s about threshold effect...

Have you ever eaten a big piece of sweet chocolate fudge cake, telling yourself that it is okay after eating nothing but green veggies for a week? Have you ever increase d your energy usage after buying energy-efficient products? If you have such experiences, you have experienced ‘moral licensing’ in your life. ‘Moral licensing’ is a term used to describe the subconscious phenomenon whereby increased confidence and security in one’s self-image or self-concept tends to make that individual worry less about the consequences of subsequent immoral behavior and, therefore, more likely to make immoral choices and act immorally. It can also be referred as “How being good can make you bad” or “Permission to sin”. Simply put, it means that after one has done something good, he/she justifies himself/herself for doing something bad. You open the door to one outsider and it gives you the right to close the door on another. In the first episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast ‘Revisionist His...