Over the centuries various writers and thinkers, looking at humans from an outside perspective, have been struck by the theatrical quality of social life. The most famous quote expressing this comes from Shakespeare: "All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts." If the theater and actors were traditionally represented by the image of masks, writers such as Shakespeare are implying that all of us are constantly wearing masks. Some people are better actors than others. Evil types such as Iago in the play Othello are able to conceal their hostile intentions behind a friendly smile. Others are able to act with more confidence and bravado — they often become leaders. People with excellent acting skills can better navigate our complex social environments and get ahead.

Sociologists have proven that people bring their own views and values to the culture they encounter; books, TV programs, movies, and music may affect everyone, but they affect different people in different ways. In a study, Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach showed episodes of the sitcom All in the Family to viewers with a range of different views on race. The show centers on a character named Archie Bunker, an intolerant bigot who often gets into fights with his more progressive family members. Vidmar and Rokeach found that viewers who didn't share Archie Bunker's views thought the show was very funny in the way it made fun of Archie's absurd racism―in fact, this was the producers' intention. On the other hand, though, viewers who were themselves bigots thought Archie Bunker was the hero of the show and that the producers meant to make fun of his foolish family! This demonstrates why it's a mistake to assume that a certain cultural product will have the same effect on everyone.

For hundreds of thousands of years our hunter-gatherer ancestors could survive only by constantly communicating with one another through nonverbal cues. Developed over so much time, before the invention of language, that is how the human face became so expressive, and gestures so elaborate. We have a continual desire to communicate our feelings and yet at the same time the need to conceal them for proper social functioning. With these counterforces battling inside us, we cannot completely control what we communicate. Our real feelings continually leak out in the form of gestures, tones of voice, facial expressions, and posture. We are not trained, however, to pay attention to people's nonverbal cues. By sheer habit, we fixate on the words people say, while also thinking about what we'll say next. What this means is that we are using only a small percentage of the potential social skills we all possess.

Every farmer knows that the hard part is getting the field prepared. Inserting seeds and watching them grow is easy. In the case of science and industry, the community prepares the field, yet society tends to give all the credit to the individual who happens to plant a successful seed. Planting a seed does not necessarily require overwhelming intelligence; creating an environment that allows seeds to prosper does. We need to give more credit to the community in science, politics, business, and daily life. Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man. Perhaps his greatest strength was his ability to inspire people to work together to achieve, against all odds, revolutionary changes in society's perception of race and in the fairness of the law. But to really understand what he accomplished requires looking beyond the man. Instead of treating him as the manifestation of everything great, we should appreciate his role in allowing America to show that it can be great.

An organization imported new machinery with the capacity to produce quality products at a lesser price. A manager was responsible for large quantities in a relatively short span of time. He started with the full utilization of the new machinery. He operated it 24/7 at maximum capacity. He paid the least attention to downtime, recovery breaks or the general maintenance of the machinery. As the machinery was new, it continued to produce results and, therefore, the organization's profitability soared and the manager was appreciated for his performance. Now after some time, this manager was promoted and transferred to a different location. A new manager came in his place to be in charge of running the manufacturing location. But this manager realized that with heavy utilization and without any downtime for maintenance, a lot of the parts of the machinery were significantly worn and needed to be replaced or repaired. The new manager had to put significant time and effort into repair and maintenance of the machines, which resulted in lower production and thus a loss of profits. The earlier manager had only taken care of the goal of production and ignored the machinery although he had short-term good results. But ultimately not giving attention to recovery and maintenance resulted in long-term negative consequences.