Why I Wrote This Article on Malcolm Gladwell’s Keyboard

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The week I graduated from high school, a teacher presented me with a gift: a silver Cross pen engraved with my name. I was surprised and touched. I hadn’t felt particularly close to this teacher, who had instructed me in Advanced Placement history and government courses. But I did well on the A.P. exams. He felt pride in my accomplishment, and the gift was his way of expressing that.

When I arrived at college, I kept the fancy pen in its box in my desk and took it out only on exam days. As I scrawled in blue books, the pen provided a reminder of past success — and a small boost in confidence. I thought of it as my lucky exam pen.

It turns out campuses abound with good-luck charms. In informal surveys, a former Connecticut College professor, Stuart Vyse, found that 62 percent of college students reported using a lucky pen or wearing a special piece of jewelry or clothing to exams. Fifty-four percent tried to sit in the same seat for tests, and 38 percent listened to a favorite pre-exam song. When Lauren Block, a professor at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business, was an undergraduate, she wore a lucky pair of Nike sneakers to her exams, and she performed so well that her roommate began borrowing them to wear to big tests, too.

Do lucky objects actually help us perform better? If we believe in their special power, research suggests that they can. Professor Block has done experiments in which students prepared for an exam with a study guide used by a previous student. Some students were shown the grade point averages and exam scores of the people who had previously studied from the guide, and the research found that those relying on a guidebook previously used by a high performer tended to do better than others.

“This is the first paper to show that specific abilities can transfer through contagion and impact actual performance,” Professor Block and a colleague, Thomas Kramer, wrote in a 2014 study, in which they suggested managers could harness this power by distributing objects (such as pens or computers) previously owned by star employees.

The same phenomenon has been observed in sports. In a 2011 study, researchers asked college golfers to execute putts from a prescribed distance. Just before the putts, half the golfers were told the club they were wielding had previously been owned by a professional golfer (it hadn’t); the others were told nothing. The result: The golfers who thought they were holding a professional’s club sank 32 percent more putts.

For a 2012 Harvard Business Review article, I interviewed Sally Linkenauger, a lecturer at Lancaster University who is the lead researcher on the golf study. I’m a writer, so instead I asked, “Would I write better if I used Malcolm Gladwell’s laptop?”

I’m a fan of Mr. Gladwell, the New Yorker writer and author of “The Tipping Point” and other books, and I wondered whether a physical talisman might improve my prose.

Professor Linkenauger said her team had debated similar questions, such as whether holding a pen owned by Einstein might help someone score better on a math test. Their research suggests that it could, under certain circumstances. “If it makes you more confident and motivated,” she said, “it will help you perform better.”

When I set out to write a book on how people can get psyched up to perform better at work, I wanted to test out the power of lucky objects. So I emailed Mr. Gladwell, whom I had met a few times when he was a young reporter, before he’d become famous. I passed along the golf club study, and told him I wanted to write a book on a keyboard that he’d typed on. To do that, I offered to ship him a new Apple keyboard. He’d use it for three months, then ship it back to me.

A few hours later, he responded: “Ha. That’s hilarious.” He gave me his home address. The next day, I shipped his new keyboard, along with some markers and instructions to please sign, mark or decorate the keyboard to signify it had been his.

Weeks passed. I checked in periodically. “Yes, I’ve been using it!” he responded. After three months, I asked him to ship it back, which he did. “I hope I have transferred some magic powers!” he wrote. Mr. Gladwell had failed to mark or sign it, but it looked well used. So I began carrying it around, plugging it into my laptop whenever I worked on my book.

Whatever luck or performance boost it provided came at the cost of convenience. At work, I’ve grown accustomed to typing on a special ergonomic keyboard to protect against repetitive strain injuries. The unergonomic Gladwell keyboard felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Carrying it around caused wear and tear: Within a few months, the down arrow key fell off.

Still, I got a small thrill knowing my fingers were striking the same keys as the fingers that had written “Outliers” and “Blink.” Because I don’t use it every day, pulling the Gladwell keyboard out for special occasions (like book writing) evokes some bit of emotion, similar to how I feel when I see our holiday table set with silver that belonged to my great-grandparents.

It can be a comfort and a pleasure to experience the power that can come from a lucky object. When imbued with the right provenance, a simple pen or keyboard may even be capable of tilting the performance odds in our favor.