Word: heaths
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North Carolina: Charles Taylor (R) v. Heath Shuler...
...Heaths trumpet the notion that certain ideas are "sticky"--a term plucked from The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell's tome about how ideas and behaviors catch on in society. Gladwell, whom the Heath brothers revere, writes about "the stickiness factor" but never fully fleshes out what makes an idea sticky. That's where Chip and Dan come in. Finding insight in fields as disparate as psychology, politics, screenwriting, economics, folklore and epidemiology, they deconstruct sticky ideas--from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign classic "It's the economy, stupid" to the way Jane Elliott taught the civil rights movement to third...
Everywhere the Heath brothers look, it seems, there is a lesson to be learned. The Nature Conservancy gives tracts of land spiffy names like the Mount Hamilton Wilderness--a better ring than "1,875 square miles of environmentally critical ecosystem"--and donations perk up. Chalk that up to the power of being concrete. The Texas department of transportation casts Dallas Cowboys and Houston Astros in testosterone-soaked ads telling drivers "Don't mess with Texas," and roadside litter drops 29% in a year. Consider it a score for an emotional appeal to identity--a way of getting litterbugs to believe...
...common sense that stories hook people on ideas--Who doesn't like a tale?--but again the Heath brothers back up their claims with scientific findings. In one experiment described, a group read a story in which John put on his sweatshirt before going out for a jog, and another group read a story in which John took off his sweatshirt before heading out. Two sentences later, up popped a reference to the sweatshirt. People who had read about John taking off his sweatshirt spent more time over this new bit of information. Mentally, they had left the sweatshirt behind...
Even the major roadblock to crafting a sticky message, which the Heaths dub (hokey alert!) the Curse of Knowledge, is explained as a sociopsychological phenomenon. This is the thing that makes a CEO talk about "maximizing shareholder value"--a phrase that may make sense to someone immersed in the logic and parlance of business but not to rank-and-file employees. The Heath brothers recount an experiment in which one group was asked to tap out songs for another group to guess the title. There was no music, just knocking on a table. Listeners correctly named about...