Persuasion - Larson Chapter 9 and Gladwell

Seminarians as self-absorbed individualists, and

What tipped us from the days of more to the daze of debacle?

Reflection Paper #6

Liz Horgan

November 5, 2009

COMM 612 Leanne Pupchek

My thoughts in reading for this week had a surprising range to them: I went

from the Good Samaritan to the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. Larson’s chapter on

Cultural Premises in Persuasion dealt with the cultural aspects of our values and the

myths and patterns we knowingly and unconsciously/peripherally embrace. Gladwell’s

writings on the Power of Context described how our internal beliefs can be affected by

our external situation or environment. The cultural and contextual come together in

the findings of a study on the Good Samaritan. Cultural premises also affected the

Financial Crisis. I found I could weave both readings into this debacle. Gladwell’s

‘tipping point’ for the crisis came as a result of a break from a longstanding cultural

narrative, one in particular described in Larson as the Possibility of Success.

Larson addresses the Benevolent Community, a myth which touts the goodness

of people and extols the virtues of those who help others, not unlike the parable of the

Good Samaritan. The Benevolent Community, and this story, is something that we as

Americans like to think of us descriptive of us; it is used to encourage behaviors of

helping others, and is seen by most in our Country as part of who we are. Researchers

at Princeton conducted a study that mimicked the parable of the Good Samaritan.

They created a situation where seminary students who were going to give talks on the

parable of the Good Samaritan were faced with a man in distress on their way to give

their speech (Gladwell, p. 165). The results of the research found that 90% of the

group of seminarians in a hurry did NOT stop to help the person in distress, while

almost 2/3 of another similar group without a time problem aided the victim. So what

does it mean when seminarians, people who describe themselves as dedicated

personally and ultimately professionally to helping others, do not act in a

compassionate way? Gladwell suggests the power of context as an answer. In the

research example, this small but ultimately significant factor of ‘being late’ overrode

fundamental ‘men of the cloth’ beliefs and resulted in the participants acting like self-

absorbed individualists. Being late created a context that super-ceded deep, culturally

instilled values and ended up changing behaviors.

Thinking of myth, cultural values and tipping points, I thought of the Financial

Crisis of 2007-2009-ongoing. Reading Gladwell, I thought about how we got to the

place in our economic world where things tipped, and the financial markets cratered.

Prior to the crisis, our economy was sliding along with housing expansion, easy credit,

a ‘he-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins’ mentality of spending, stock market gains,

massive CEO compensation, financial deal making, deregulation, new-fangled

investments (and little understood) like derivatives, wars without sacrifice, and an

overall culture of more and excess. Just as Gladwell mentioned in his analysis of New

York City crime, the financial world seemed as if it was on a one-way trajectory.

Frenzied efforts to generate more and more fee income, to create new and elaborate

ways to finance real estate development that grew more and more risky, and a push

towards more and more of almost everything created a massive imbalance. The

Horatio Alger story of humble beginnings, hard work, modesty and moderation was

replaced by a ‘we’re dealin’’ and ‘anything goes’ culture. What tipped us from the days

of more to the daze of debacle? Gladwell suggests that it is a little thing, a coming

together of small occurrences. Could it be as simple as a run on a few banks by

individual depositors who ‘heard’ disturbing talk of liquidity problems and excessive

risk? Maybe. Now that the financial world has tipped, we see the errors of our ways,

the myth of Eternal Return (Larson, p. 238-9) is upon us. Talk of getting back to the

days of financial rigor, of prudent spending and lending, of meaningful governmental

regulation and more modest executive compensation…in essence, talk of balance is

now back in vogue.

Myths, narratives, and stories shape our values and impact our individual

actions as well as our collective social body. The Good Samaritan can be impacted by

situations and environments that can alter behaviors and override individual cultural

values. The Financial Crisis occurred with a tipping motion brought to a head by

actions that ignored our long-standing cultural patterns of behavior.