Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.
Students who attend what they considered to be their first-choice school were less likely to persist in a biomedical or behavioral science major, they write. You think you want to go to the fanciest s...
So what does correlate with brain size? The answer, Dunbar argues, is group size. If you look at any species of primate-at every variety of monkey and ape-the larger their neocortex is, the larger the...
Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.
One of the most important tools in contemporary educational research is value added analysis.
Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the ve...
No one-not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses-ever makes it alone
No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
My social circle is, in reality, not a circle. It is a pyramid. And at the top of the pyramid is a single person—Jacob—who is responsible for an overwhelming majority of the relationships that constit...
My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that, the son of the billionaire investor George Soros has said. But I remember seeing it as a kid, and thinking, At least...
In the end, Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not...
In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.
In recent years, for example, there has been much interest in the idea that one of the most fundamental factors in explaining personality is birth order: older siblings are domineering and conservativ...
Everything that can be tested must be tested,
Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in t...
Arousal leaves us mind-blind.
The futility of something is not always (in love and in politics) a sufficient argument against it.
Our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can't look inside that room. but with experience we become expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret - and decode - what li...
Capitalization learning: we get good at something by building on the strengths that we are naturally given.
What the Israelites saw, from high on the ridge, was an intimidating giant. In reality, the very thing that gave the giant his size was also the source of his greatest weakness. There is an important...