PRESENTED BY-G.SAI SOWJANYA

TPS-A(2T3-17)

Malcolm Gladwell He was the staff writer with The New Yorker

magazine since 1996. TIME named Gladwell one of its 100 most

influential people. His talent in taking simple topics and

bringing them into the public's view through great journalism and storytelling.

About the author:

CHAPTER-1

The Statue that Didn’t Look Right

The J. Paul Getty Museum in California acquired a kouros – a perfectly preserved marble sculpture of a nude male youth dating from the 6th century.

It took Getty 14 months to investigate the authenticity of the kouros and costs them just under US$10 million.

However, a number of art experts in the first two seconds of looking at the statue – in a single glance – felt an “intuitive repulsion” and proved that it was a forgery.

Blink is about those first “2 seconds”.

CHAPTER-2

The Theory of Thin Slices: How A Little Bit of Knowledge

Goes a Long way

John Gottman, a psychologist.

He has bought more than thousand of married couples into the small room called “LOVE LAB”.

Each couple has been videotaped and results have been analyzed.

The above method of knowing about the couple is called SPAFF(for specific affect).

There is other method of knowing is by Morse code.

Morse code made up of dots and dashes, its like speech. Everyone has different voice.

Gottman, can teach us a great deal about a critical part of knowledge known as thin-slicing.

“Thin-slicing” refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.

CHAPTER-3

The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Decisions

Vic Braden, a world renowned tennis coach, began to notice he had an incredible ability.

This is the second critical fact about the thoughts and decisions that bubble up from our unconscious.

Snap judgments: they rely on the thinnest slices of experience.

Snap judgments and rapid understanding take place behind a locked door.

Gladwell uses this story to show how the brain is able to come to quick conclusion without us even consciously knowing it.

CHAPTER-4

The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall for Tall, Dark, and Handsome

Men

Thin-slicing can be a powerful tool when trained the proper way to use it, but it also has the ability to lead us astray.

Gladwell illustrates his concept recounts a story of former president “Warren Harding”.

In this section of the book Gladwell shows us how the thin-slicing process can be interrupted and lead us to negative outcome in which he calls the “dark side” of thin-slicing.

CHAPTER-5

Paul Van Riper’s Big Victor: Creating Structure for

Spontaneity

The opposing side of thin-slicing, a plethora of information, can create a dilemma.

For this scenario Gladwell introduces us to “Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine commander”.

He also took a scenario of a doctor, choosing whether to operate a patient or not who is suffering from heart attack---based on decision tree.

CHAPTER-6

Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right – and Wrong – Way to Ask People What They Want

When people try to thin-slice outside their normal realm of expertise the solution tends to be the wrong one.

Gladwell uses examples of a rock star, Kenna, and the challenges that the Coca-Cola Company faced with the rising market share of Pepsi.

Chapter-7

Seven Seconds In the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind

Reading

Gladwell refers to when we first meet someone new and we have set impression of what that person is like and what they are thinking, also known as the first impression.

Gladwell gives an example of four officers in New York who fail to read a mind successfully on a February night in 1999.

LEARNINGS FROM THE BOOK

A decision made very quickly can be as accurate as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.

Snap judgments and first impressions can be controlled and educated.

The power of rapid reasoning is an ability that everyone can develop.

When a judgment is made out of context will usually result in an incorrect response.

Too much information can be overwhelming when making a decision and can cause the individual to over analyze a given situation.

There are ways to change the way we as individuals think from the lessons taught in Blink.

If you continue to make bad snap judgments, then you have to modify by examining your implicit biases.

Thin-slicing will help improve your ability to read people on first impressions.