The Tipping Point

By Malcolm Gladwell
Published in 2000

Gladwell goes into looking at how neutral a facial expression can be. He describes how three reporters were reacting to a variety of subjects. Based on a scale of 1-21, 1 being the most negative and 21 being the most positive, two of the reporters were seen as unbiased to a political subject on Mondale and Reagan, two people from different political parties. The third reporter, working for ABC News, seemed to change his facial features in a more positive way when speaking of Reagan. The analysis of that is that he is biased towards Reagan. From just his facial expressions, he influenced just about 75% of the people watching ABC News into voting for Reagan in an election. I like to think of my facial expressions as being neutral. My friends seem to think so, and I feel as if my face seems to decide that it has to look happy half the time and neutral the other half the time, which seems to mean that I am unhappy. That is just what I have been told. Personally I'm not to sure, but I could agree with it.