Blink - the Book - Malcolm Gladwell

Blink

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink, describes his theory of "thin-slicing," in which is our ability to gauge what is really important without over analyzing a situation. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often better than carefully planned decisions because people tend to unconsciously make correct judgment because of experience or knowledge. Gladwell uses different examples to support his idea. This paper will describe his theory, the factors and conditions used to make snap judgments reliable and unreliable, and six of his various examples in which support his theory, such as the Getty Museum and Kouros, Dr. Gottman’s Marriage Lab, Implicit Association Test, Bob Golombs sales success, Cook County Hospital Emergency Room, and the Aeron Chair. The theory of “thin slicing” is an unconscious phenomenon that we have all experienced at one time or another in our lives in which affects our decision making and thoughts.

First and for most, Gladwell explains the power to make instant intuition is not some magical property that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. It is a product of long hours and intelligent design, of meaningful work environments and particular rules and principles. In addition, “thin slicing” is the ability of our brains to identify key patterns with in a very small amount (thin slicing) of data, and to make a snap judgment based upon the pattern. This process accurse automatically and unconsciously, furthermore, the unconscious nature of the process makes our brain enormously efficient and from usually from means we do not know. For instance, Gladwell supported this sense of instant intuition within “thin slicing” with the Getty Museum. The Getty Museum purchased a statue known as the Kouros. The Kouros was purchased for 7 million in 1985and was said to be made in Greece in 530 B.C, however, before purchasing, the museum had requested information about the art, they had their lawyers receive paper work, and scientific exams were performed to confirm if the statue was real. The exams came back stating that the statue was in fact old; resulting in its purchase. Later, the statue was shown to art historians. This incident changed everything, as the historians complained stating that the statue did not look right and that they didn’t know why but that it looked odd to them.

This made Getty’s buyers concerned, making them further investigate the statue and if in fact it was made in 530 B.C. Subsequently after returning to the lab, it was discovered that the statue was forged and was simply prefabricated to contain substances that could fool the lab work. It was also discovered that the reason why historians felt that the statue was odd was because its body had different forms of time periods. The historians’ unconsciously made a correct snap judgment through there experiences about the statue without a lot of information,