Blink: The Power Of Thinking

2. A. The research was conducted by first paying his participants $4.50 ($30 today) to come in and take part in the experiment. The group of participants he selected was composed of 40 males between 20 and 50 who were told that the experiment was to test the effect of “punishment on learning“. There was 15 skilled-unskilled workers, 16 white-collar employees, and 9 professionals. Apart from them, there were 2 key participants, a confederate, who was actually a 47 year-old accountant and an actor who dressed as the experimenter. He decided to test the power of obedience in a laboratory which was clever on Milgram’s part. He designed a realistic looking fake scenario, complete with a shock chair and men dressed in lab coats. The most realistic component was the fake shock generator that actually quite scary-looking. It had levels of shock that went up from 30 to 450 volts and the levels were labeled to describe the intensity of the shock. The participants

Accredited journalist, Malcolm Gladwell, delves into the hidden truth behind the subconscious mind and explores the psychological process of intuitive thinking, both good and bad, in the novel Blink. Gladwell’s purpose is to exploit how the unconscious works and to expose the connection between your intuition and the real world which helps educate the reader on how to develop advanced decision making skills. He adopts an informative and passionate tone in order to establish credibility with his older audience and emphasize his dedication toward his works. Through the use of rhetorical questions and repetition, Gladwell demonstrates that a thin-slice of information can be used to deduce deeper comprehension.

He asks, “How are human beings connected? Do we all belong to separate worlds, operating simultaneously but autonomously, so that the links between any two people, anywhere in the world are few and distant? Or are we all bound up together in a grand, interlocking web? (Page 34)” Gladwell doesn’t actually expect readers to come up with an answer, but he does realize that readers wouldn’t consider these questions had he not put the questions in their heads to start with. By doing this he allows his audience to form their own opinions on the questions asked before he reveals what answers the questions were originally designed to expose. Gladwell effectively uses rhetorical questions to get the audience interested early on, therefore making the information given in the selection more important.

An ineffective device used by Gladwell was his use of repetition of evidence and failure to acknowledge counterexamples by forcing the reader into thinking that Gladwell’s theory is the only one possible to be correct. The lack of acknowledgment towards counterexamples thrusts the audience into thinking that Gladwell’s opinion is the only viable one. “Philip Norman, who wrote the Beatles biography”, “nonstop show, hour after hour”, “Here is John Lennon”, and “playing all night long” are examples of repetition of evidence because the author already established that the

As Gladwell conducts his argument, he writes with confidence and authority, which expresses his passion and knowledge about the subject. Gladwell’s poise throughout the essay, combined with his resume, establishes his credibility and constructs a rhetorically effective argument. Being a best-selling author as well as a professional

Gladwell strategically uses the Zimbardo Prison Experiment, because this shows that with the two previous cases that the possibility of the subject being a criminal was eliminated. This experiment shows that even educated Stanford students in a monitored and controlled atmosphere are at the mercy of the social context around them. In the Zimbardo six days in because of the effect it was having on the prisoners. “I realize now,” one prisoner said after the experiment was over, “that no matter how together I thought I was in my head, my prison behavior was often less under my control than I realized” (296). This study shows that under a controlled atmosphere that educated Stanford students are not greater than the social context around them. Unlike in the first two examples the Stanford experiment was more inclusive and showed that anyone even highly educated non criminals could have their behaviors altered by mere contextual

The author’s purpose is to show how easily people are influenced by society and those around them.

In the experiment, people were picked randomly and one as a teacher and one as the student. They were told to take a quiz and give electric shocks of increasing intensity as punishment if the student can’t answer. During the experiment, many people were concerned as someone can be heard shouting but only a few people who decided to stop and stick to their morals. But the others kept on going because they were just following orders from a superior (Milgram 77). "The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip Zimbardo, is about an experiment that was made to understand the roles people play in prison situations. For the experiment, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. The participants were told to act as prisoners and guards. It was planned to be a two-week experiment but was forced to shut down in 6 days, all because of people quickly getting into their roles and started acting like the real prisoners and guards (Zimbardo 104). To compare both experiments, although they differed vastly in design and methodology, the point of both experiments was to observe how far an individual would go in inflicting increasing pain on a victim. Also how people obey under authoritative circumstances, when given power or different roles, however the writers differ in the seriousness of the fight for individuality and the use of reality.

Throughout time, history and studies strongly suggest that environment plays a key role in human behavior. This even includes compromising ones moral compass to follow an authority figure or how one might use their power in the environment they are in. Studies such as the Millgram Experiment in 1962 to the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 were two similar studies that showed how easily people are swayed from what they think is right and wrong. In the novella of Fredrick Douglass, his autobiography proves the results of the studies. In all the environments that Fredrick Douglass experienced, he witness the power of authority first hand.

In Chapter Three, “The Warren Harding Error,” Gladwell focuses on what he calls “the dark side” of thin-slicing—the way that our unconscious minds tend toward Gladwell by arguing why our minds subconscious automatically assumes things based of stereotypes using the art of persuasion. Throughout this book you constantly hear of the idea of how we make snap judgements of everything and everyone and how we can be more aware of it in our lives. It also explains the good and bad side of "thin-slicing." (AKA snap judgements) In the book it says, "...to convince you that our snap judgements and first impression can be educated and controlled." (Gladwell Pg. 15) In chapter three of the book, Blink, it reflects on how snap judgements tie in with stereotypes. It says in the book, "We make connection much more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds..." (Gladwell Pg. 77) The chapter starts off with exemplification when Gladwell gives the Warren Harding example which also explains the bad side to thin slicing. He then goes into classification and definition with the example of the IAT tests. The IAT tests are the perfect example as to how thin slicing is not always a good thing. This test measured that second level of attitude in an unconscious level, so it is our immediate associations that tumble out before you have time to think about them. The test also shows the unconscious attitudes that you might have even if they are completely opposite of what your

The ethics of the study were however called into question (Banyard, 2012). One protestors among many was Diana Baumrind (Banyard, 2012). Baumrind (1964) argued whether the ‘welfare of the participants’ was considered Banyard (2012, p.79). Baumrind (1964) further criticised the experiment for the damage it could do the public’s perception of psychology (Banyard, 2012). In Milgram’s (1963) defence, he was not ignorant of the potential harm caused to participants, (Banyard, 2012). In fact, he was

Blink is a book that analyzes the way people make decisions. According to the author, Malcolm Gladwell, people use one of two strategies to come to a decision. The first strategy is a conscious one. When using this strategy, people think about what they have learned and develop an answer. The second is an unconscious strategy in which a person's brain reaches a conclusion in a matter of seconds, often times without awareness. These conclusions are what we generally refer to as hunches or instincts and, it is the development and reliability of these types of conclusions that Gladwell focuses on in this book. In doing so, Gladwell sets out to accomplish three tasks. The first is to prove that decisions made very quickly can be as

As illustrated in the text, the first task of Blink is to convince you of a simple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately. The second task of Blink is to answer when should we trust our instincts, and when should we be wary of them? The third and most important task of this book is to convince you that our

Whilst reading this scenario you may have noticed that you were constantly presented with situations where your mind was forced to jump to a set of conclusions and make a decision in the space of about two seconds. Blink is a book about those two seconds, about thinking that happens in the blink of an eye, thinking that Gladwell refers to as rapid cognition. You’re probably thinking that ‘rapid cognition’ is just a fancy way of saying instinct or intuition, so you may argue then that this book is simply about that; intuition. Whilst you may not be wrong, you’re not right either. In fact, intuition doesn’t even appear in the book. Gladwell refers to intuition as that gut feeling, emotional,

The Milgram Experiment proves some of the personality traits exhibited in the novella. For example, in Milgram’s experiment people blindly follow authority leading to horrible outcomes, in the novella the Officer blindly follows the ways of the Old Commandant and ends up regretting what he had done. The previous commandant represents the man in the lab coat, as he is the man who designed the whole system; he is the authority that everyone follows. In the novella the condemned man represents the student, he is at the mercy of the system. Finally, the Officer is the naive subject who is following authority, they might be against what it stands for, however, as humans naturally follow authority he submits to the rules of the old commandant.