Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Malcolm Gladwell

Ximing Yu

Ming Yang

23/5/3Slide #1

BlinkChapter 1-3

Ximing Yu

23/5/3Slide #2

The Statue That Didn’t Look Right

• Getty Kouros

Thin Slicing

• Thin Slicing: Our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience.

• Spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones.

Thin Slicing

• The Love Lab– After analyzing a normal conversation between a

husband and wife for an hour, Gottman can predict whether that couple will be married in 15 years with 95% accuracy.

– If he analyzes them for 15 minutes, his accuracy diminishes to 90%.

Thin Slicing

• The Secrets of The Bedroom– Five dimensions to measure people: Extraversion,

Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional stability, Openness to new experiences.

– Friends can describe us fairly accurately.– However, strangers may end up doing a much

better job in judging us.

Snap Judgments

• Snap judgments are enormously quick• They rely on the thinnest slices of experience• They are also unconscious.

Snap Judgment

• Double fault– Vic Braden able to predict double fault twenty out

of twenty.

Snap Judgment

• “worried”, “Florida”, “old”, “lonely”, “gray”, “bingo”, and “wrinkle”

• Making the big computer of brain, adaptive unconscious, think about the state of being old.

• Then you act old Walk slowly.

The Warren Harding Error

• Warren Harding– 29th President of the United States– In office:

March 4, 1921 – August 2, 1923

Male Female…………………………John………………………………………………………Bob………………………………………………………Amy……………………………

…………………………Derek………………………………………………………Peggy……………………………

Male FemaleCareer Family

…………………………John………………………………………………………Laundry……………………………

…………………………Amy………………………………………………………Merchant……………………………

…………………………Entrepreneur…………………………

Male FemaleFamily Career

…………………………John………………………………………………………Laundry……………………………

…………………………Amy………………………………………………………Merchant……………………………

…………………………Entrepreneur…………………………

BlinkChapter 4-6

Ming Yang

23/5/3Slide #14

23/5/3Slide #15

Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Accordingly, a ‘genius’ is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.

-- Thomas Edison (1929)

Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory:Creating Structure for Spontaneity

23/5/3Slide #16

• Paul Van Riper is a retired officer of the united States Marines Corps. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Directions for the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.

• He was asked to play the rogue commander of Red in the war game of Millennium Challenge ’02.

• He won the first round of the war game using old methods to evade Blue’s sophisticated electronic surveillance network.

• He said: “ When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision making, neither is good or bad. What is bad is if you use either of them in an inappropriate circumstance.”

Two Important Lessons

• Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.

• In good decision making, frugality matters. To be successful decision makers, we have to reduce it to its simplest elements which can be recognizable and used to make snap judgments.

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

• Rock musician from Ethiopian immigrant

• Before releasing his first album, music market research firm played his songs on the radio try to appeal audience.

• However, the conclusion was blunt: “Kenna, as an artist, and his songs lack a core audience and have limited potential to gain significant radio airplay.” And Kenna’s once promising career suddenly stalled.

• When Kenna ran into Paul McGuiness, the manager of U2, his promising career restarted.

•  His songs aspire to U2's uplifting, grandiose themes, and he's one of the few pop artists to have Bjork's gift for putting melodies over a wide range of rhythms and time signatures.

Pepsi’s Challenge

• It is complicated to find out want people really think.

• The Blind Leading the Blind

Important lessons

• Market research isn’t always right. But testing products or ideas that are truly revolutionary is another matter, and the most successful companies are those that understand that in those cases, the first impressions of their consumers need interpretation.

• It is the new and different that is always most vulnerable to market research.

Conclusion

• The power of thinking without thinking lies in the intuition and inspiration properly utilized in your decision making.