Blink Frank Gladwell Analysis

Blink Have you ever had to make a split second decision? Have you ever mad an impulse judgment without knowing all the facts? You probably have; its human nature. Whether its reading body language, processing facial expressions, or even having someone rub you the wrong way, your gut feeling or intuition about situations can be described in a different manner. In the book “Blink” By Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell describes his theory on thin slicing, how it works and how we can utilize this unconscious tool for our own benefit. Thin slicing is when the unconscious mind automatically identifies patterns developed from past experiences and makes what Gladwell calls snap judgments. He shows several examples of when thin slicing can be beneficial as well as a few flaws in the slicing process. One of the main points to the thin slicing process is that only small amounts of data are required so long as it’s the right data in making the proper snap judgment. This point is made in the examples that Gladwell uses with the Getty Museum, John
Gottman’s marriage lab, and the millennium challenge war game. Throughout the book, Gladwell explains how thin slicing works and how we can use this to our advantage. One of the first examples that Gladwell uses in exposing the power that snap judgments has is shown in a real situation that occurred at the Getty Museum. The Getty Museum had acquired what they believed to be an ancient Greek sculpture from a private art dealer (perhaps he posted it on craigslist) for a low asking price of $10 million. The art dealer Gianfranco Becchina had what appeared to be proper paper work and documentation showing the recent history and sale of the sculpture. The museum decided to first look in to the authenticity of the piece. The museum had their team of lawyers check out the paper work and they came back with positive reinforcement. Next, the in-house historian checked out the sculpture and also had an expert geologist check out the piece and they determined that indeed it appears to be the proper marble from the proper quarry in the correct region of Thasos. The sculpture also had a thin layer of calcite which takes hundreds or thousands of years to develop and, this too, was consistent with the sculpture’s age.
The Getty Museum went ahead and purchased the sculpture. In the Getty’s preparation to release their new sculpture to the public they invited over actual experts from who have seen these sculptures unearthed. The invitation came before the actual deal was complete. One historian by the name Evelyn Harrison who is the world’s foremost leading expert on Greek sculptures, actually apologized for the Getty purchasing the sculpture because she believed something was amiss. Another art historian who actually sat on the board trustees for the museum saw the sculpture and could not stop focusing on the sculptures finger nails for some reason. The director of the Metropolitan Museum, Thomas Hoving, also commented on the sculpture and said “It was ‘fresh’ –‘fresh,’”. (pg.5) But, how can a sculpture that is supposed to have been sculpted thousands of years ago look fresh in the eyes of a historical expert? In each one of these experts’ experiences the sculpture appeared off in some shape or form. They could not pinpoint how or why it was off but knew in the few moments of examining the piece that it was not right, that it was a fake in some shape or form, even though the geologist who is an expert in his field said it checked out fine. The historians all had a negative feeling towards the sculpture. After further in-depth investigation of the sculpture the truth was discovered; the sculpture in deed was a fake. The investigation showed that the sculpture had evidence of body parts from different regions and different periods in time. Essentially, the thin slice of information that the historians had to work with was enough for them to identify the sculpture as a fraud. They all made a snap judgment and, due to there experience on the subject, the historians were correct. There was an analogy in the book that Gladwell mentions. This analogy was the Gottman’s marriage lab. This is an analogy on how thin slicing works. This example is not exactly like thin slicing but the same idea is used. This marriage lab is a comparison of thin slicing that show the same patterns. Gottman has developed some kind of model that predicts whether the marriage is going to last or not based upon years of experience and reflection. Once his model was completed he only needs a little amount of information in order for him to make a legitimate judgment. This kind of experience allows him to know what kind of data to look at. This example thought us that with little information we can determine a couple’s ability to stay married by pin pointing certain unconscious remarks that the couple displays. Gottman was pin pointing four factors called “The Four Horsemen.” The “Four Horsemen” are defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. He looks for these because these are the ones that are more impacted towards married couples. If contempt, the worst emotion, is present then that’s a sign that the marriage is in trouble. As you can see thin slicing is very affective because there is no need to know everything about the married couples, instead they look for the unconscious remarks. One lesson about the shortcomings of thin slicing is the Implicit Association Test. The Implicit Association test shows us that regardless of our conscious beliefs we unconsciously make implicit associations between different types of traits. This also shows us that we tend to favor with what we associate the most. This affects how we judge situations and people. It turns out that we often make bad judgments. Despite our conscious beliefs our reactions are mostly based on our unconscious associations between someone’s external traits with someone’s personality. This shows us that we tend to associate with the traits that we often abide with. For example, the book mentions the Warden Harding mistake. This mistake was when Harding was elected as the president. The voters saw his physical traits and his mannerism figure. Society associated him as being president like material and leadership traits. As you can see judgments based on implicit association are meaningless because we often make the wrong judgment. Another shortcoming of thin slicing is Kenna’s music career.
Kenna was playing live and after the show was half way the people began to like it. It took them a while to get accustomed to it. Kenna’s music was not labeled as a specific genre which made it harder to identify as a specific type of music. At first no one liked the music because it was a new type of music. This is a good example of the systematic error with thin slicing because we judge something new to our experience as bad. Because of this error we have a hard time distinguishing new from bad. When it comes to judging something as being new to us, we immediately judge the new experience as bad. No matter what the situation is, people as society do this type of error often because we have a hard time trying new things. Whenever we need to make a good solid judgment we need to become familiar with the new thing and then we can decide whether it is good or
bad.