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
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