When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted.

If we think about emotion this way - as outside-in, not inside out - it is possible to understand how some people can have an enormous amount of influence over others. Some of us, after all, are very good at expressiing emotions and feelings, which means that we are far more emotionally contagious than the rest of us.

When the students were asked to identify their race on a pretest questionnaire, that simple act was sufficient to prime them with all the negative stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement. If a white student from a prestigious private high school gets a higher SAT score than a black student from an inner-city school, is it because she’s truly a better student, or is it because to be white and to attend a prestigious high school is to be constantly primed with the idea of “smart”?

We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility.

There are lots of issues more important than where billionaires donate their money.

It's as if you were interested in fashion and your neighbor when you were growing up happened to be Giorgio Armani.

Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.