Sequence # 3

Tasia Milton, Rutgers University, Fall 2010

Assignment One (Gladwell)
Readings: Malcolm Gladwell, "The Power of Context"

From the Good Samaritan experiment, Gladwell concludes that "the convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less important, in the end, in guiding your actions than the immediate context of your behavior" (164). In a response to Gladwell's argument, answer the following question:

How do Gladwell's examples and case studies work to define the limits of free will?


Assignment Two (Gladwell and Faludi)
Reading: Malcolm Gladwell, "The Power of Context" and Beth Lofreda, "Losing Matthew Shepard"

How can we explain the news media's reports of Matthew Shepard's murder while considering Gladwell's claim 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" (162)?

Assignment Three (Gladwell, Loffreda, and Faludi)
Reading: Malcolm Gladwell, "The Power of Context," Beth Lofreda, "Losing Matthew Shepard," and Susan Faludi, "The Naked Citadel"

In "The Power of Context," Malcolm Gladwell offers several theories for interpreting behavior, and questions the concept of a unified "character." In "The Naked Citadel," we saw obvious conflicts between the image the Citadel wanted to portray and the actual behavior of the cadets. In "Losing Matthew Shepard," we saw not only Laramie, Wyoming's response as a community to Shepard's murder but also the effect of intense media scrutiny that impacted how the nation percieved the community. Your assignments so far—your discussions of character, individual free will, the mass media and public perception—have all been working towards one question:

How do we understand the difference between how people see us and how we see ourselves?

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