COM300 Book Review Presentation Book: Blink The Power of Thinking - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Made by: Prachi Gupta

COM300 Book Review Presentation

Book: Blink – The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Introduction

 Our brain uses two different strategies to make sense of any situation:

• 1. Conscious strategy: logical and definitive, but slow
• 2. Adaptive Unconscious: the brain reaches the conclusions

quickly (eg: The ‘knowing how good a professor is’ Experiment by Nalini Ambady)  Sometimes we make choices in an instant - in the blink

• f an eye. We arrive at a decision in the first two

seconds after a problem is presented to us. Blink is a book about those first two seconds.

Tasks of the Book

 The author tries to make us aware of the following three facts through this book:

• 1. decisions made very quickly can be as good as decisions

made cautiously and deliberately

• 2. when we make a split-second decision, we are

vulnerable to being guided by our stereotypes and prejudices, even ones we may not necessarily endorse

• r believe.
• 3. our snap judgments and first impressions can be

controlled.

The Theory of Thin Slicing

 Thin-slicing is the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.  Eg: The Love Lab Experiment by John Gottman.

The Dark Side of Thin Slicing (The Warren Harding Error)

 Classic Warren Harding Error - To see someone and let his first impression drown out every other piece of information  Eg: Harding elected as the President of the United States based on his looks.

The Delicate Art of Mind Reading

 Face is an enormously rich source of information about

• emotion. Expression alone is sufficient to create marked

changes in the autonomic nervous system.  Whenever we experience a basic emotion, that emotion is automatically expressed by the muscles of the face. That response may linger on the face for just a fraction

• f a second or be detectable only if electrical sensors are

attached to the face. But it’s always there. eg: Difference between a genuine and fake smile

 The classic model for understanding what it means to lose the ability to mind-read is the condition of autism. When someone is autistic, he is mind blind.  On the most basic neurological level, for someone with autism, a face is just another object.  We become temporarily autistic in situations when we run out of time.  Training and expertise give us the ability to extract an enormous amount of meaningful information from the very thinnest slice of experience.

The Lesson of Blink Listening with your Eyes

 Gladwell makes the reader aware of his gut instincts and urges him to trust them more frequently.  Taking our powers of rapid cognition seriously means that we have to acknowledge the subtle influences that can alter or undermine or bias the products of our unconscious.  My favorite line from the book: “Prejudging is the kiss of death. You have to give everyone your best shot.” 

Thank you!