How social contagions reach critical mass, part 1 The law of the significant few

Critical mass in social contagions is the point where they start spreading exponentially. The speed is so fast that spreading takes care of itself. These contagions can happen either suddenly or slowly. An example of a sudden case was a change in using aeroplanes after 9/11. Instead of using a plane, many people used their own cars. Their probability of having lethal accidents became much higher. And after 9/11, there was much more deaths in transportation compared to the time before 9/11. An example of slow contagion can be any product that has been sold for many years before a big success. And then suddenly its popularity accelerates exponentially. Social contagions have three main components: people who spread it, stickiness of the message and the environment it spread. This text is mainly about the people behind social contagions.

The law of the significant few

Throughout the history, there has been people who have had enormous effects on others. These people are crucial for spreading social contagions and creating social proof. Sometimes they are people who are not known to have so much connections with other people and sometimes they are well known all over the world or in their own field of expertise. All these people have great social skills. They are efficient accelerators of epidemics. Being at the right place at the right time also matters. But it is not enough without great social skills. Getting assistance from these people help you to accelerate and widen the amount of listeners of your message. You can widely divide these people into three different groups: connectors, experts, and salesmen. Most effective of these people are some kind of combinations of these groups.

Connectors

If you don´t know many people, you cannot be a connector. These are the people who know everyone. Connectors are the type of people who are natural in getting to know new people. When you talk to them, you can be surprised how many people they know. I am sure you know at least one person who is like a connector. Ask his help for spreading your message. Connectors create so called weak links between people. They tell you that ”you should contact this person to talk about getting a new job”, or ”you can ask this person about a car he is selling.” Connectors are not important only because they know many other people. It is also highly likely that they know some people who can help you. They know the most important influencers and introduce them to other people. These people probably know more experts and salesmen, the other groups of people that are effective in spreading social contagions.

Experts or mavens

Malcolm Gladwell calls these people Mavens in his book Tipping Point. A maven means a ”one who accumulates knowledge” in Yiddish. Experts are not the people who have a similar effect on others than connectors. Experts are sources of information and connectors are more like the messengers. Experts have natural tendencies to gather new information. They figure out the best options for whatever you are trying to seek and want to deliver them to you. They have a natural desire to help other people solve their problems. They know the tiniest details about the things that rest of the people have no idea. Experts are both like teachers and students. They can also be seen as databanks.

Salesmen

Connectors and experts are not persuaders. They cannot change people´s minds. You need different type of people to get people change their opinions. These people are charismatic, they have lots of energy and you can feel their enthusianism before you even talk to them. Salesmen are capable of bringing rational and uniform arguments when they talk to you. These people are not only good in giving verbal arguments to you. They express their feelings and emotions well by changing their physical appearance. They do all of this by timing their facial and bodily expressions with your natural rhytm of communication. Most successful politicians are examples of salesmen. They have an ability to persuade you without even always having a personal contact.

Have a reasonable doubts about the advantage of having contact with these people

Be aware of the effects these people can have on you. All the effects are not good. This applies especially to experts and salesmen. People who you think are experts can be just fools in disguise. Many people follow their messages and life and think they are real authorities. They lead people to wrong directions. They may have lots of detailed information to share, but have no understanding about which pieces of their information are relevant. It is hard to find real cause-effect relationships from complex information and events. Even real experts are wrong sometimes. If you are not capable of knowing if these experts are real deals, you shouldn´t listen to them. Salesmen are very persuasive and they have power to change people´s opinions into wrong direction. You should always be especially mindful while you listen to them.

Next week I will introduce you to sticky messages.

-TT

Critical Mass

Definition

In nuclear physics, critical mass is the minimum amount of a given fissile material necessary to achieve a self-sustaining fission chain reaction. A subcritical mass is a mass of fissile material that does not have the ability to sustain a fission chain reaction. You can think subcritical mass as a waste, in a sense that you didn´t achieve the reaction you wanted. A supercritical mass is a mass in which there is an increasing rate of fission. In your purposes, you should understand that all the excess material or effort after the critical mass is reached is wasted. Sometimes supercritical mass can cause more troubles than good results.

Critical mass can be described as a point at which something, for example, an idea or a virus, is dominant enough to grow, or sustain, a process, reaction or adopting new technology. Critical mass has many other names like, the tipping point, the minimal effective dose, break-even point, etc.

Hard to know when critical mass is achieved

It is pretty easy to know when you have enough critical mass in physical reactions before they happen. When it comes to real life everything is much harder. Most often, these moments can only be determined afterwards. When the critical mass is reached, the reaction will accelerate quickly. Most often, it is hard to stop the reaction until the acceleration changes into deceleration of the reaction. For example, the flu is unstoppable in every flu season. After the critical mass of people become sick, the flu is unstoppable until it has reached its peak. This point of no return is very hard to define, if not impossible in many cases.

Critical mass (Tipping Point) in social epidemics

Malcolm Gladwell has written a book called Tipping Point, which describes the three rules of social epidemics which are:

1. The law of the few: All the social epidemics have some people with the special set of social skills involved. These people have vast social networks, are trusted by others, and willing to share their information with them.
2. The stickiness factor: All the sticky messages have some common characteristics: they are simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and are told through stories.
3. They are spread through the right environments: These environments are usually optimal for spreading epidemics.

When all these three rules are working at the same time, you have better possibilities to spread your ideas for other people. If one of these things are missing, reaching the critical mass of people is improbable. To reach a tipping point, social epidemics are spread through the combinations of many psychological tendencies like social proof and availability bias.

Critical mass of expertise/skill

Critical mass of expertise or skill is reached only after you have had enough deliberate practice. On average, this takes thousands of hours and many years, depending on the amount of competition and talent you have. In highly competitive fields, like popular sports, for example tennis, most people will never reach the critical mass of skill. This point can be enough income from tennis to be a professional. In working life, critical mass of expertise may help you to get into the point where you become irreplaceable. Then you can have a possitility to choose how much you work, when you work and to whom you work for. At this point, we have many choices to choose from and no one else to tell us what to do. Most people never reach this point.

Minimum Effective Dose (MED)

The minimum effective dose is the amount of work, medicine, and resources, that will produce the desired outcome. In medicine, all the extra dose may produce unintended and unwanted consequences for the human body. If you look at the packaging of the medicine, you see many warnings about side-effects like headache from the medicine you use for feeling or getting better. Without reaching the MED, you cannot get better and using medicine becomes a wasted effort. You can also have many things you really don´t want to do, but you have to, like cleaning the house. MED is the amount of cleaning needed to have your house clean enough for you to live in. The amount of cleaning should be the amount that the most vulnerable of the people who live in the house can stay healthy.

Critical mass is one of the most important models in the latticework. But, in order to understand it better, you need to understand more models.

Peak, Anders Ericsson
4 Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss
Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell

-TT