Introduction: The Roseto Mystery

1. Who is Stewart Wolf and what did he discover about the Rosetans?

“Wolf was a physician. He studied the stomach and digestion at the University of
Oklahoma.” (Gladwell, 5-6) He discovered that the Rosetans had developed strong
community-bonding habits that were the reason for lower death rates from heart attacks
and other factors among them compared to the rest of the United States. In the Outliers,
Malcolm Gladwell says, “The results were astonishing. In Roseto, virtually no one under
fifty-five had died of a heart attack or showed any signs of heart disease. For men over
sixty-five, the death rate from heart disease in Roseto was roughly half that of the
United States as a whole. The death rate from all causes in Roseto, in fact, was 30 to
35 percent lower than expected.” (7)

2. What did Gladwell mean by the statement? “These people were dying of old
age.”

Gladwell means that the reasons for for death in Roseto were limited to nothing but
growing old, making them healthier than the rest of the United States, and also making
their town an outlier to everyday experience. Gladwell says that in the town of Rosetto,
according to sociologist John Bruhn, “There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug
addiction, and very little crime.” (7)

3. During the 1950’s & 60’s what was the lead cause of death among American
male under 65?

Gladwell says, “This was the 1950s, years before the advent of cholesterol-lowing
drugs and aggressive measures to prevent heart disease. Heart attacks were an
epidemic in the United States. They were the leadoing cause of death in men under the
age of sixty-five.”(6) Heart attacks were very widespread in the country.

4. What was the secret to the Rosetans’ radiant health?

The secret to the Rosetan’s radiant health was the emphasis they had on community
and supporting each other throughout their lives. In analyzing how the Rosetans lived,
Gladwell says, “As Bruhn and Wolf walked around the town, they figured out why. They
looked at how the Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street,
say, or cooking for one another their backyards. They learned about the extended family
clans that underlay the town’s social structure. They saw how many homes had three
generations living under one roof. … They went to mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel
and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted twenty-two
separate civic organizations in a town of just under two thousand people. They picked
up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy
from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.”(9) In
developing these close consolidating relationships with each other, Rosetans were able
to loosen the stress in their lives developing better health.

5. Why do you think Gladwell starts the book Outliers with the story of the
Rosetans?

He started the book Outliers with the story of the Rosetans because they are a people
who have a different lifestyle in their town than the rest of the United States making
them healthier, and thus marking a clear outlier in statistical records of deaths from
heart attacks and other causes compared to the rest of the country. Gladwell says,
“Wolf’s profession had a name for a place like Roseto - a place that lay outside
everyday experience, where the normal rules did not apply. Roseto was an outlier.” (7)

Chapter 1: The Mathew Effect

6. Mathew 25:29 – unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which
he hath. What is this parable about?

To describe this parable, Malcolm Gladwell says, “It is those who are successful … who
are most likely to be given the kinds of opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the
rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and
most attention. And it’s the biggest nine and ten-year olds who get the most coaching
and practice.” (30) This parable is about describing the outlying factors that give certain
people more success over others. In this chapter, Gladwell discusses how having the
advantage of being older and the success factor of mature development leads older
individuals in the same age level to receive more training and opportunity to become
successful over their younger counterparts.

7. Why did Gladwell choose hockey to prove the Mathew Effect?

The cutoff date for selecting hockey players at the age of nine or ten is January 1st,
meaning that players that are more mature than those born towards the end of the year
are more likely to be chosen to enter the rep squad where they get better training and
practice. Then when it comes time to select players for the major leagues, these same
mature players are selected because they have more experience. Malcolm says that
according to psychologist Robert Barnsley, “If you make a decision about who is good
and who is not good at an early age; if you separate the “talented” from the “untalented”;
and if you provide the “talented” with a superior experience, then you are likely to enf up
giving a huge advantage yto that small group of people born closest to the cutoff date.”
(25) The hockey example proves the Mathew Effect because players who coaches view
as more talented from an early age because of their maturity are selected for better
training which gives them higher qualifications when the time to choose players for the
major leagues arrives. In short, mature players start with more experience at a young
age than their younger counterparts and get more experience through better training
later on leading to their success in qualifying for the major professional leagues.

8. This chapter really isn’t about hockey at all...what is it about?

This chapter is really about what makes certain individuals successful over others in
life. When referring to the purpose of this chapter, Chladwell says, “We’re going to
uncover the secrets of a remarkable lawyer, look at what separates the very best pilots
from pilots who have crashed planes, and try to figure out why Asians are good at math.
And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us … I will argue that there is
something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success.”(17-18)
Furthermore, Gladwell’s purpose in this chapter is to offer a different viewpoint than
what most people think about what makes people successful over others.

9. How does this chapter about hockey connect to the introduction about
Rosetans? What is Gladwell trying to prove?

This chapter about hockey connects to the introduction about Rosetans, because there
is an outlier in both the Rosetan community that makes them more healthy than than
the rest of the country because of ther emphasis on community-bonding in their town,
and in the system of selecting hockey players for the major leagues that leads certain
more mature individuals to qualify. Gladwell is trying to prove that, “It’s not enough to
ask what successful people are like. … It’s only by asking where they are from that we
can unravel who succeeds and who dosen’t.” (19)Gladwell is referring to the fact that
we should understand the outlying factors that lead to success separate from the path
people take to success, and understand that there are some things they were born with
or situations they found themselves in that actually lead to their success.

10. Why does Gladwell use the analogy of the tree in the forest to further his
point? Why does he say, “this book is not about trees, but about forests.”

He uses this analogy because by trees in the forest he means the personal traits of the
individual that they use to attain success, and by the forest he means the situation and
environment that can either expand or deplete their ability to attain success. Gladwell
says, “We all know theat successful people came from hardy seeds. But do we know
about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put disown the roots, and
the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?”(20) The situation an
individual finds themselves in is what Gladwell is focusing on in the book when it comes
to factors that impact people’s success instead of their personal traits or lifestyle.

11. What outstanding random factor of hockey players’ success does Gladwell
uncover in this chapter?

The cutoff date for selecting hockey players at the age of nine or ten is January 1st,
meaning that players that are more mature than those born towards the end of the year
are more likely to be chosen to enter the rep squad where they get better training and
practice. Then when it comes time to select players for the major leagues, these same
mature players are selected because they have more experience. As Gladwell states,
“The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the
child born at the end of the year persists. It locks children into patterns of achievment
and underachievment, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch pon and on for
years.” (28) Essentially, assessing hockey player’s success based on the ability of
children who are in a wide age range and giving more training to those who are more
well trained at a young age creaes a factor of success that favors more mature players
born closer to the cutoff date.

12. What did the qualifying cut off dates have to do with players that got into the
league?

Qualifyin cutoff dates favored more mature players over their younger counterparts
because they would be selected for better training based on their greater capabilities
due to mature development at a younger age, and therefore gain more experience to
qualify for the league. Regarding these mature players, Gladwell says, “Coaches … are
more likely to view as talented the bigger and more coordinated players, who have had
the benefit of critical extra monthe of maturity.”(24)

13. What was Gladwell’s proposed solution to the “Mathew Effect”?

Gladwell’s proposed solution to the “Mathew Effect” was to divide people into more even
categories in terms of their maturity levels to level the field when it comes to their
assessment and opportunities they attain based on their capabilities. His description of
the proposed solution to the Mathew Effect when it comes to hockey is, “We could set
up two or even three even hockey leagues, divided up by month of birth. Let the players
develop on separate tracks and ythen pick all-star teams.” (Gladwell, 33) That way,
assessment would be more faily calculated among people of a closer age range with
similar capabilities.