Malcolm Gladwell Research Paper

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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Author: Malcolm Gladwell Category: Art of Living Other name: Diana C. Website: http://motsach.info Date: 14-October-2012 Page 1/127 http://motsach.info Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell Introduction - The Statue That Didn’t Look Right In September of 1983, an art dealer by the name of Gianfranco Becchina approached the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. He had in his possession, he said, a marble statue dating from the sixth century BC. It was what is known as a kouros-a sculpture of a nude male youth standing with his left leg forward and his arms at his sides. There are…show more content…
Wilson writes in his book Strangers to Ourselves: “The mind operates most efficiently by relegating a good deal of high-level, sophisticated thinking to the unconscious, just as a modern jetliner is able to fly on automatic pilot with little or no input from the human, ‘conscious’ pilot. The adaptive unconscious does an excellent job of sizing up the world, warning people of danger, setting goals, and initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner.” Wilson says that we toggle back and forth between our conscious and unconscious modes of thinking, depending on the situation. A decision to invite a co-worker over for dinner is conscious. You think it over. You decide it will be fun. You ask him or her. The spontaneous decision to argue with that same co-worker is made unconsciously-by a different part of the brain and motivated by a different part of your personality. Whenever we meet someone for the first time, whenever we interview someone for a job, whenever we react to a new idea, whenever we’re faced with making a decision quickly and under stress, we use that second part of our brain. How long, for example, did it take you, when you were in college, to decide how good a teacher your professor was? A class? Two classes?…show more content…
No one gets angry. There are no scenes, no breakdowns, no epiphanies. “I’m just not a dog person” is how Bill starts things off, in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice. He complains a little bit-but about the dog, not about Susan. She complains, too, but there are also moments when they simply forget that they are supposed to be arguing. When the subject of whether the dog smells comes up, for example, Bill and Sue banter back and forth happily, both with a half smile on their lips. Sue: Sweetie! She’s not smelly . . . Bill: Did you smell her today? Sue: I smelled her. She smelled good. I petted her, and my hands didn’t stink or feel oily. Your hands have never smelled oily. Bill: Yes, sir. Sue: I’ve never let my dog get oily. Bill: Yes, sir. She’s a dog. Sue: My dog has never gotten oily. You’d better be careful. Bill: No, you’d better be careful. Sue: No, you’d better be careful. . . . Don’t call my dog oily, boy. 1. The Love Lab How much do you think can be learned about Sue and Bill’s marriage by watching that fifteen-minute videotape? Can we tell if their relationship is healthy or unhealthy? I suspect that most of us would say that Bill and Sue’s dog talk doesn’t tell us much. It’s much

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