David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

by Malcolm Gladwell

What frightened them was their prediction about how they would feel once the bombing started.7 Then German bombs dropped like hail for months and months, and millions of remote misses who had predicted that they would be terrified of bombing came to understand that their fears were overblown. They were fine. And what happened then? The conquering of fear produces exhilaration. And: The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage. Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.

7The prediction we make about how we are going to feel in some future situation is called “affective forecasting,” and all of the evidence suggests that we are terrible affective forecasters.

This is called the “principle of legitimacy,” and legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice—that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can’t treat one group differently from another.