REVIEWING MALCOLM GLADWELL’S BLINK: THE POWER OF THINKING WITHOUT THINKING COHORT NINE
REVIEWING MALCOLM GLADWELL’S
BLINK:THE POWER OF
THINKING WITHOUT THINKING
COHORT NINE
Waheed Alao
Uduak Okpanefe
Yetunde Adebiyi
Godwin Abii-Ndoh
Imaobong Ekanem
Keke Nweledim
Adedayo Alimi
Members
STRENGTHS AND FLAWS
WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW
WHEN WE BECOME FORCED TO BLINK
RELATIONSHIPS AND OUR SUBCONSCIOUS
PRIMING
BLINKING IN BUSINESS
THIN-SLICING
AN OVERVIEW OF BLINK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AGENDA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Malcolm Gladwell was born in Fareham, Hampshire, England on September 3, 1963 to Graham Gladwell, a British mathematics professor and Joyce, a Jamaican psychotherapist
As a teenager, Malcolm was an exceptional middle-distance runner
He graduated with a degree in History from University of Toronto, Trinity College, Toronto in 1984He is the author of four other books: The Tipping Point, Outliers, What Others Saw: and Other Adventures, and David and Goliath,
Gladwell is also a speaker and has worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1996
His works deal with research in the areas of psychology, social psychology and sociology
Malcolm Gladwell appeared on the Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people
AN OVERVIEW OF BLINK
Blink is a non-fiction book with seven chapters. Its paperback edition consists of 320 pages
Blink is written in a scientific, yet conversational style and is aimed at the
broadest possible audience
Gladwell describes the main subject of his book as "thin-slicing": the ability to use limited information from a
very narrow period of experience to come to a conclusion. He suggests that spontaneous decisions are
often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones
Gladwell sets himself three tasks: to convince the reader that these snap
judgments can be as good or better than reasoned conclusions,
to discover where and when rapid cognition proves a poor strategy, and
to examine how the rapid cognition's results can be improved.
Gladwell says snap decision-making can make you better at your job, improve your relationships and
unlock new worlds of understanding.
CEOs, managers, employees and consumers often make bad choices because they’ve been given too little
information, and other times because they have too much.
THIN-SLICING
The term explains how we can make very quick inferences about the state, characteristics or details of an individual or situation with minimal amounts of information.
The Statue that Did Not Look Right
A story about how a simple hunch emerged victorious over months
of research
Getting to Know you Without Actually Meeting You
An experiment on learning about strangers’ traits either through short or lengthy information gathering
Cohort Nine
BLINKING IN BUSINESS
CEOs Race to Reach Greater Heights
A survey that proves how features like height and race influence how we perceive people
When Pepsi had Coca-Cola Trembling in Their Pants
In the 1980s, Pepsi’s sales figures began to catch up with CocaCola’s. How did Coca-Cola respond?
All Na Packaging!
How elements like packaging, branding, colour and aesthetics are as important as the products themselves.
PRIMING
Are We Smart Because We Think
We Are?
An experiment about how seemingly
harmless questionnaires
influence academic performance
Let’s Play the Word Game
Can an otherwise random series of words influence the way we
behave?
RELATIONSHIPS AND OUR SUBCONSCIOUS
The Which-Couples-Will-Stay-Married GameHow one can accurately predict the outcome of a couple’s relationship by merely watching them interact for 15 minutes.
The Four Horsemen
Defensiveness Stonewalling Criticism Contempt
WHEN WE ARE FORCED TO BLINK
Diallo Diallo.. Why Amadou Diallo Was Killed
How things can go tragically wrong in moments where we become forced to make snap decisions.
The Man Who Didn’t Pull the Trigger
How experience helps us thin-slice better
WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW
What’s Your Ideal Kind of Man?
How women often contradict themselves in their dating habits
Or…
This?
This?
Stereotypes, Prejudice and the Power of First Impressions
How these reveal themselves eventually, even though we often staunchly deny them.
FLAWS
Blink was too hasty in drawing inferences from its illustrations and experiments.
Gladwell drew too many conclusions from a variety of fields where he had no real expertise
Blink failed to truly analyze or prove many of the theories it promotes
Although Blink emphasizes the importance of experience in employing intuition efficiently, it still often comes across as contradictory and implausible in its theory of thin-slicing
In terms of structure, Blink often failed to distinguish clearly between the subject matter of its chapters
THANK YOU!