TOW #2 | IRB - Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines the outliers of society and figures out their patterns to success. Author to many other bestsellers such as Tipping Point, Blink, and David and Goliath, Gladwell takes his previous writing experiences along with research to synthesize his findings into a series of short “stories.” He uses well-known public figures and statistics to appeal to his audience and establish his credibility.

When discussing his “10,000 hour rule” theory, Gladwell references many well-known, successful figures like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen, Eric Schmidt, etc. to show how almost all of today’s successful people were born between the years of 1955 and 1956. By using well-known people to prove his point, the audience is able to find more credence in Gladwell’s theories. Because the figures Gladwell listed are well-known, the audience is aware that all the people he listed were people that were highly paid and successful people. This reveals that Gladwell is not and cannot make any sort of logical fallacy in this specific conclusive synthesis of research.

Throughout the book, Gladwell utilizes detailed statistics and studies to portray a specific relationship between a certain variable with the success of a certain type of outlier. On pages twenty and twenty-one, Gladwell displays the player roster of the 2007 Medicine Hat Tigers, and inquires his audience to “take a close look and see if you [they] can spot anything strange about it” (20). Giving the audience a full, detailed list of the basketball roster and asking the audience themselves to examine it further add to his credibility. Gladwell himself had to examine the roster and figure out a pattern between these top star basketball players and their success. By providing the whole roster, Gladwell allows the audience to see the relationship between the basketball players’ birthdays and their success themselves. Much like using well-known figures, by showing the audience all the statistics, research, and steps Gladwell took in reaching his conclusion, the audience is able to find believability in his research and points that he makes throughout the book.

Gladwell does not target a specific audience. As stated in the introduction, he uses Outliers to “do for our understanding of success what Stewart Wolf did for our understanding of health” (11). By using collective terms like “our,” Gladwell places himself in the same category as the audience, as well as directly addressing the audience in an informal manner. By doing so, Gladwell closes the gap between author and reader and makes the audience feel close, almost face-to-face, with Gladwell himself.