Malcolm Gladwell embodies the entire subject of the book “Blink,” in both the title of the book, and the phrase “thin-slicing,” which is a person ability to accurately gauge what is important from a very narrow period of time. To put it simply, impulsive decisions can often be more reliable than well thought out decisions. Gladwell provided the reader with multiple examples throughout each chapter of the book to back up his thesis. My goal is to reconstruct each of these examples/arguments in a more convenient manner for the reader, to support Gladwell’s argument. Come with me on a journey into the world of snap decisions.…
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush by Virginia Hamilton was awarded the John Newbery Honor in 1983. Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush tells the story of Teresa, at teenage girl who starts up a relationship with the ghost of her deceased uncle. In this book Virginia Hamilton places Teresa in a peculiar situation. However, by challenging traditions and taboos in black culture, Teresa figures out what she must do for her family, especially her uncle.…
In chapter five of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, in which Malcolm Gladwell has several main points of focus, which correlate previous chapters and bring new ideas into sight. In the previous chapters, he talks about “thin-slicing” (Gladwell Ch. 1, Section 2, Paragraph 7), which is finding patterns in narrow windows of experience and also how snap judgment can help you in situations in which quick reactions are used. In chapter five he focuses on the other side of “thin-slicing” (Gladwell Ch. 1, Section 2, Paragraph 7), showing that you cannot always trust it, how emotional involvement can…
Malcolm Gladwell, a best-selling author, describes the social phenomenon known as thin-slicing in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Thin-slicing refers to the way that people take in little information quickly and make judgements with or without knowing they are doing so. Gladwell asserts that thin-slicing is imperative in save time and make valuable predictions. Gladwell’s inference is well supported with psychologists’ research and data collected on the subconscious.…
In the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell, the central theory that Gladwell presents is that often the decisions and observations made in only a split-second, in the blink of the eye, are better than decisions which are made after extensive thought. To present and justify this idea Gladwell describes the lives of several people who make, or have made, important snap decisions with a high level of success or failure. He then explains the logic behind each story and relates it back to his original principle. The narratives include the story of a fake Greek statue and the debate of it's authenticity, a retired U.S. general who defeated the best of the military with quick thinking, and a group of police officers who killed an innocent immigrant because of a tragic misunderstanding, among many others. While I found many of these anecdotes interesting and do agree to a certain point that on occasion trusting your intuition is more effective than boundless thinking, many of the examples used in Blink oversimplify or misstate the importance of "those first 2 seconds" (8).…
Gladwell also speaks of the studies of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who created the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), states that a lot of “thin slicing” can be done within seconds by unconsciously analyzing a person’s slight look called a "microexpression".…
The novel I chose for the historical book review is called The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. This novel is about the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War, and it is written from the perspective of the people fighting while sharing their thoughts and feelings about the battle as it goes on. Although it is historical fiction, The Killer Angels centers around the Battle of Gettysburg, which, of course, really took place. While the strategy of the battle is factual, the dialogue is fictitious. The book starts with a Foreword that gives details of the armies and people involved. Four main chronological sections cover the days of Monday, June 29, 1863, through Friday, July 3, 1863, while switching between viewpoints Union and Confederate participants. An Afterword tells the reader what happens to several of the key characters. Even though a chapter is written from one commander's perspective, the author still allows you to see what some of the other characters in those scenes are thinking. Without this way of writing the novel, the reader wouldn’t truly be able to understand thoughts and opinions of the soldiers, so some of the choices wouldn't have made as much sense. Shaara included the arguments between characters about how to go about the attack, which gives the reader much more details about how complicated the few days of the battle were.…
The Killer Angels is a stunning recollection of the telltale battle of the Civil War: the Battle of Gettysburg. Set from June 29 to July 3, 1863 and told from the vantage points of several soldiers and commanding officers from both sides, including Lee, Longstreet, and Chamberlain, Michael Shaara effectively paints a picture of the war that divided America, from the tactical planning to the emotional hardships…
Everyone does not look at life in the same way, but instead, they look at it individually with their own life experience. Kindred, a novel written by Octavia Butler is a novel about an African-American writer named Dana, who lives in Los Angeles during the 1970’s with her white husband, Kevin. An unknown force however, pulls Dana back into time, where she travels back in the past during the Antebellum South where she is met with the harsh period of slavery in the early United States. With her journeys back in the past, she is always met with the son of a plantation owner, Rufus, whom Dana will see grow into adulthood. She learns that she has been sent back into time for a purpose that concerns Rufus, which she finds…
flesh and tiny stones picked up from an ant heap. Lame Deer knew though that after all of this was over…
The authors explained to readers that God intended for sex to be enjoyed mutually within a marriage between a man and a woman and that sex can make or break a marriage. According to (Penner & Penner, 2003),…
In this chapter of Blink, the writer discusses the art of thin-slicing which is being able to make a quick decision or judgement about someone or something with few but relevant details. I found the better example to helping me better understand the method of thin-slicing was the bedroom example. In my home, there are four bedrooms. With the method of thin-slicing, I understand that anybody would be able to figure my family’s individual personalities with the five prompt questions that psychologist, Samuel Gosling has put together. I also believe that even without the questions, someone curious enough can go into any bedroom and be able to figure out what type of personality the owner of the room has.…
“Thinking without thinking” (Gladwell, 2005) is the subconscious mind at work rapidly disseminating information and honing in on patterns that really matter to formulate a quick decision or opinion. This decision making approach is recognized as, thin-slicing where small sound bites or snippets of information is quickly assimilated and then based on, experience and expertise the sub consciousness or unconsciousness is lead to formulate opinions or draw conclusions. This is contrary to the…
Critical thinking is defined as purposeful, reflective judgment that manifests itself in giving reasoned and fair-minded consideration to the evidence, conceptualizations, methods, contexts, and standards in order to decide what to believe or what to do (Facione, 2011). I believe that Malcolm Gladwell is trying to tell readers of Blink that critical thinking can be done in just a few short minutes. “What is Blink about? It’s a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in the blink of an eye.“ (Gladwell, 2005). You don’t need to take hours or days to do it. We have always been told that spending time to gather all the information is better, but is that necessarily true? Blink has several stories in it where we see that a decision that takes place in the blink of an eye actually was the best choice. Throughout this paper there will be several stories of how critical thinking doesn’t have to be drawn out and can take place in just a blink.…
The book, Honor and the American Dream: Culture and Identity in a Chicano Community, and the film, Salt of the Earth, both relay to their audience, the pursuit of happiness within the Chicano community in which they live. These works aim to show how Mexican-American immigrants fight to keep both their honor and value systems alive in the United States of America, a country which is foreign to their traditions. The Mexican-Americans encountered in these works fight for their culture of honor in order to define themselves in their new homeland, a homeland which honors the American dream of successful capitalism.…