Blink Greek Gladwell Analysis
Gladwell opens "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" with the tale of a kouros, an ancient Greek statue of a youth that entered the market, catching the eye of the Getty Museum in California. It was close to seven feet tall, perfectly preserved, and just under $10 million.
The museum went through the voluminous processes to prove its authenticity. A geologist determined that the statue originated in the island of Thasos, sheathed in a thin layer of calcite, a substance that accumulates on statues over centuries. After months of investigation, the museum staff concluded the thing was genuine, and made the purchase.
But an art history connoisseur named Federico Zeri was consulted, and in an instant he determined it was fake. Another …show more content…
The statue had actually been sculptured by Roman forgers decades before. The hunches of historians proved more reliable than the musings of anthropologists.
There exists in the mind of every living being, Gladwell argues, a mighty background process, performed behind the scenes in our subconscious. We as humans have the ablility to sieve huge collections of information, compile data, pinpoint key facts and come to astonishingly rapid conclusions, even in a two-second first impression. " 'Blink' is a book about those first two seconds," Gladwell writes.
"Blink" moves quickly through a series of delightful stories, all about the backstage mental process we call intuition. There is the story of the psychologist John Gottman, who since the 1980's has worked with more than 3,000 married couples in a small room, his "love lab," near the University of Washington. He videotapes them having a conversation. Reviewing just an hour's worth of each tape, Gottman has been able to predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will be married 15 years later. If he watches only 15 minutes of tape, his success rate is about 90 percent. Scientists in his lab have determined they can usually predict whether a marriage will work after watching just three minutes of newlywed
The museum went through the voluminous processes to prove its authenticity. A geologist determined that the statue originated in the island of Thasos, sheathed in a thin layer of calcite, a substance that accumulates on statues over centuries. After months of investigation, the museum staff concluded the thing was genuine, and made the purchase.
But an art history connoisseur named Federico Zeri was consulted, and in an instant he determined it was fake. Another …show more content…
The statue had actually been sculptured by Roman forgers decades before. The hunches of historians proved more reliable than the musings of anthropologists.
There exists in the mind of every living being, Gladwell argues, a mighty background process, performed behind the scenes in our subconscious. We as humans have the ablility to sieve huge collections of information, compile data, pinpoint key facts and come to astonishingly rapid conclusions, even in a two-second first impression. " 'Blink' is a book about those first two seconds," Gladwell writes.
"Blink" moves quickly through a series of delightful stories, all about the backstage mental process we call intuition. There is the story of the psychologist John Gottman, who since the 1980's has worked with more than 3,000 married couples in a small room, his "love lab," near the University of Washington. He videotapes them having a conversation. Reviewing just an hour's worth of each tape, Gottman has been able to predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will be married 15 years later. If he watches only 15 minutes of tape, his success rate is about 90 percent. Scientists in his lab have determined they can usually predict whether a marriage will work after watching just three minutes of newlywed