What is the broken windows effect? In a house with many glass windows, once the glass of one window is broken, other intact glass windows will soon be broken. This is the broken window effect.

What is the broken window effect?

In a house with many glass windows, once the glass of one window is broken, other intact glass windows will soon be broken. This is the broken window effect.

Several examples of the broken window effect

If some graffiti appears on a wall and is not cleaned away, soon the wall will be covered with messy and unsightly things;

There are some messes on the road. Scraps of paper, and soon there will be more garbage, and eventually people will throw the garbage on the ground as a matter of course.

In front of the traffic light, everyone is obeying the traffic rules and waiting for the traffic light, but once one person runs through the red light, other people will immediately follow and run the red light.

The underlying logic of the broken window effect

The "first broken window" is often the starting point for things to get worse. This phenomenon can often be seen in our daily life. For example, let's say you visit two friends' homes. Friend A’s home has bright windows and clean floors, and the floor is spotless. If he forgets to prepare an ashtray for you, you will definitely ask him to find an ashtray for you before lighting up your cigarette, and you will never bear to let the ashes fall on the shiny floor. Friend B’s home is full of dust and paper scraps. You probably didn't bother to ask your friends to find an ashtray for you, and instead just let the ashes fly away or just threw the cigarette butt on the ground.

Of course, the deterioration of the matter cannot be separated from the hands behind it that add fuel to the flames. Faced with "the first broken window of and ", we often suggest to ourselves: the window can be broken without punishment. Thinking like this, unknowingly, we became the second pair of hands and the third pair of hands... We went to the market to buy melon seeds and grabbed a few to taste. What about and ? Where did you put them? Did you see a piece of melon seed peel on the ground, so you smashed the peel and threw it on the ground? Walking on the street to buy an ice cream on a hot day, if you can't find the trash can for a long time, where would you put the wrapping paper? Should you find a corner with garbage and throw it away quietly? There are more and more noises on the road, handwriting on the wall, and phlegm on the ground. We are getting further and further away from elegance, civilization, and morality.

Not only can we not be the ones who break the window for the Nth time, we must also work hard to be the ones who repair the "first window". Even when we cannot choose the environment, or even have no power to change the environment, we can still work hard, that is, to prevent ourselves from becoming a "broken window."

From the "broken window effect", we can get the following truth: the existence of any kind of bad phenomenon is conveying a message, which will lead to the infinite expansion of the bad phenomenon. At the same time, we must be highly vigilant about those that appear to be It is an accidental, individual, minor "fault". If you are indifferent to this kind of behavior, turn a blind eye to it, are slow to respond, or do not correct it well, you will allow more people to "break more windows" and you will be It is very likely to evolve into the consequences of "a dike thousands of miles long, collapse in an ant nest". Just like what Liu Bei said, don't do good deeds because they are small, and don't do them because they are small.