Malcolm Gladwell External World

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External world such as people’s surroundings, parents’ expectation and market strategy pattern changes people’s thinking and behaviors. Malcolm Gladwell states that people’s behaviors may change under different situations and environments by arguing about how David Gunn oversees the subway system. After David Gunn make the subway to an orderly, clean and neat environment, crime in the subway decreased. Gladwell then concludes how character is unstable: “Character, then, isn’t what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It 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 …show more content…

Characters are unstable that they might change due to different situations. From this, we can notice that how people’s behaviors and thinking can be influence by the external world. In Moss’s essay, we also can see how external world as market strategy pattern affect food companies’ decisions facing the increase of obesity in USA. Different food companies gather together to discuss the increasing number in obesity and how to deal with it. Geoffrey Bible, the C.E.O. of Philip Morris, said: ‘Well, that’s what the consumer wants, and we’re not putting a gun to their head to eat …show more content…

If we give them less, they’ll buy less, and the competitor will get our market. So you’re sort of trapped’ (Moss 267). Food companies don’t change their ingredients because they think what consumers want is only the taste. If they make food taste good, they earn profit. Healthy ingredient and nutrition are high cost and they won’t help companies earn profits. As consumers, we might feel disappointed and angry after reading Moss’s essay. Most of the food companies don’t care about consumers’ health. For them, following the market strategy and earning profit are the most important things. Food companies even change the nutritional profile to make those food products look healthier. Consider that, before food companies employees going to work in the food company, they might not know about all these secrets about food

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