The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can - By Gladwell, Malcolm Page 0,31

test is 117 points, with the average score, according to Friedman, somewhere around 71.

What does it mean to be a high scorer? To answer that, Friedman conducted a fascinating experiment. He picked a few dozen people who had scored very high on his test—above 90—and a few dozen who scored very low—below 60—and asked them all to fill out a questionnaire measuring how they felt “at this instant.” He then put all of the high scorers in separate rooms, and paired each of them with two low scorers. They were told to sit in the room together for two minutes. They could look at each other, but not talk. Then, once the session was over, they were asked again to fill out a detailed questionnaire on how they were feeling. Friedman found that in just two minutes, without a word being spoken, the low scorers ended up picking up the moods of the high scorers. If the charismatic person started out depressed, and the inexpressive person started out happy, by the end of the two minutes the inexpressive person was depressed as well. But it didn’t work the other way. Only the charismatic person could infect the other people in the room with his or her emotions.

Is this what Tom Gau did to me? The thing that strikes me most about my encounter with him was his voice. He had the range of an opera singer. At times, he would sound stern. (His favorite expression in that state: “Excuse me?”) At times, he would drawl, lazily and easily. At other times, he would chuckle as he spoke, making his words sing with laughter. In each of those modes his face would light up accordingly, moving, easily and deftly, from one state to another. There was no ambiguity in his presentation. Everything was written on his face. I could not see my own face, of course, but my guess is that it was a close mirror of his. It is interesting, in this context, to think back on the experiment with the nodding and the headphones. There was an example of someone persuaded from the outside in, of an external gesture affecting an internal decision. Was I nodding when Tom Gau nodded? And shaking my head when Gau shook his head? Later, I called Gau up and asked him to take Howard Friedman’s charisma test. As we went through the list, question by question, he started chuckling. By question 11—“I am terrible at pantomime, as in games like charades”—he was laughing out loud. “I’m great at that! I always win at charades!” Out of a possible 117 points, he scored 116.

12.

In the early hours of April 19, 1775, the men of Lexington, Massachusetts, began to gather on the town common. They ranged in age from sixteen to sixty and were carrying a motley collection of muskets and swords and pistols. As the alarm spread that morning, their numbers were steadily swelled by groups of militia from the surrounding towns. Dedham sent four companies. In Lynn, men left on their own for Lexington. In towns further west that did not get the news until morning, farmers were in such haste to join the battle in Lexington that they literally left their plows in the fields. In many towns, virtually the whole male population was mustered for the fight. The men had no uniforms, so they wore ordinary clothes: coats to ward off the early morning chill and large brimmed hats.

As the colonists rushed toward Lexington, the British Regulars (as they were known) were marching in formation toward the town as well. By dawn, the advancing soldiers could see figures all around them in the half light, armed men running through the surrounding fields, outpacing the British in their rush to get to Lexington. As the Regulars neared the town center, they could hear drums beating in the distance. Finally the British came upon Lexington Common and the two sides met face to face: several hundred British soldiers confronting less than a hundred militia. In that first exchange, the British got the best of the colonists, gunning down seven militiamen in a brief flurry of gunshots on the common. But that was only the first of what would be several battles that day. When the British moved on to Concord, to systematically search for the cache of guns and ammunition they had been told was stored there, they would clash with the militia again, and this time they would be soundly defeated. This