The Triple Package Read Online Free Page A

internalize American attitudes without, however, being fully Americanized. Instead they are likely to feel like outsiders both within their own culture and in the larger society.
    Straddling this cultural edge may make people feel that they don’t belong anywhere, that they have no cultural home. But it can also be a source of prodigious vitality and creativity. It can lead people to break free from their group’s cultural constraints—rejecting would-be limits on their personality, their sexuality, their careers—while retaining the core traits of the Triple Package. Thus, Triple Package groups can reinvent themselves across generations, and individuals can achieve forms of success, grand or simple, their parents never dreamed of.
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    T HROUGHOUT THIS BOOK we’ll be referring to Triple Package cultures and Triple Package groups, but to avoid any misunderstanding, we want to emphasize two important points.
    First, a Triple Package culture will not produce the qualities we’ve described—a sense of superiority, a chip on the shoulder, a capacity to endure hardship, and so on—in all its members. It doesn’t have to in order to produce group success; it just has to do better than average. In 1941, baseball great Ted Williams got a hit only 4 times out of every 10 at-bats, but because the average Major Leaguer gets a hit about2.6 times out of 10, Williams achieved a Hall of Fame feat that hasn’t been equaled since. Similarly, a culture that produced four high achievers out of ten would attain wildly disproportionate success if the surrounding average was, say, one out of twenty.
    Second, and conversely, an individual can possess every one of theTriple Package qualities without being raised in a Triple Package culture. Steve Jobs had a legendarily high opinion of his own powers; long before he was famous, a former girlfriend believed he hadnarcissistic personality disorder. His self-control and meticulous attention to detail were equally famous. At the same time, according to one of his closest friends, “Steve always had a kind ofchip on his shoulder. At some deep level, there was an insecurity that Steve had to go out and prove himself. I think being an orphan drove Steve in ways that most of us can never understand.”
    Possibly Jobs was born with these Triple Package traits, or perhaps, as his friend speculated, being an orphan played a role. In any given family, no matter what the background,an especially strong parent or even grandparent can instill children with a sense of exceptionality, high expectations, and discipline, creating a kind of miniature Triple Package culture inside the home. Individuals can also develop these qualities on their own. Being raised in a Triple Package culture doesn’t guarantee you anything unique or inaccessible to others; it simply increases your odds.
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    E VERY ONE OF THE PREMISES underlying the theory of the Triple Package is supported by a well-substantiated and relatively uncontroversial body of empirical evidence. Later chapters will elaborate, but we’ll briefly summarize here.
    The capacity of group superiority complexes to enhance success is borne out by repeatedly confirmed findings ofstereotype threat and stereotype boost, both in laboratory experiments and field work. Basically, belonging to a group you believe is superior at something—whether academic work or sports—psychologically primes you to perform better at that activity. Moreover, sociologists specializing inimmigrant communities have found that certain groups turn a sense of cultural pride and distinctive heritage into an “ethnic armor” directly contributing to higher levels of educational achievement.
    That insecurity can spur accomplishment is corroborated by a recentgroundswell of studies showing that a personal feeling of not being good enough—or not having done well enough—is associated with better outcomes. This conclusion is also supported bytwo of the leading twentieth-century studies