Haste Makes Waste
Stop and Think
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
Look Before You Leap
Why then, in Malcolm Gladwell’s
“blink” do we meet…
A psychologist who can predict within a few minutes whether a couple’s marriage will last more than
15 years…
A tennis coach who knows when a player
will double-fault before the racket
even makes contact with the ball…
Art historians who can recognize
whether million dollar pieces are a
fake with only a glance…
The Purpose of ‘blink’
1. Convince you that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately
2. Explain when you should trust your instincts and when to be wary of them
3. Prove snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled
The Case of the Kouros
• In 1993 an art dealer approaches the Getty Museum with a rare sculpture valued at over $10 million dollars
• The Getty issues a 14 month examination to determine its authenticity using electron microscopes, microprobes, mass spectrometry, x-ray diffraction, and fluorescence
• Sculpture is purchased for $10 million
The Case of the Kouros
• Over the next several years experts receive feeling of disappointment, shock, queasiness, and even nausea when they first view it
• No one has a scientific explanation
• Slowly the case for the authenticity of the kouros falls apart, until its eventually proven fake
Good to a Fault
• Live or taped, pro or amateur, male or female; Vic Braden could predict a double fault with amazing accuracy
• During testing he could predict 94% of the double faults in a live match
• Braden spent hours and days trying to figure out ‘how’ he knew, never finding an explanation
Why were a group of experts able to be more effective in 2
seconds of observation than 14 months of scientific
evaluation?
In the 2 seconds before a serve, how
could Braden predict a double fault with
such amazing accuracy?
Blink attempts to explain those 2
seconds…
Iowa Gambling Experiment
How long will it take the average person to figure out the game?
Iowa Gambling Experiment
On Average…
• 50 cards for us to realize there is a difference between the decks
• 80 cards for us to understand and explain the difference
How long will it take for the unconscious brain to figure out
the game?
Iowa Gambling Experiment• Iowa Scientists used a machine that
measure the activity of the sweat glands below the skin of the palm of your hands
• Gamblers started generating activity in response to the red decks after only 10 cards.
• More importantly, they began favoring the blue decks long before their conscious brain knew what was going on.
Jam Experts?
• Consumer Reports put together a panel of food experts and had them rank 44 exotic jams from best to worse
• Same jams were giving to two different sets of college students– Group 1: Rank the jams based on first
impression– Group 2: Rank according to a complicated
list of criteria and explain their decisions
Jam Experts?
• Group One: Correlation between college students and experts was .55 (considered a incredibly high rating)
• Group Two: Correlation between college students and experts was .11 (considered equivalent to chance)
Conscious vs. Unconscious
The Conscious Mind– Located on the left side of the brain– Calculated, Direct, Logical– Can only process 9 items at one time– Sleeps when we sleep– Represents 10% of our total brain
capacity
Conscious vs. Unconscious
The Unconscious Mind– Located on the right side of the
brain– Associated with our nervous system,
heart rate, homeostasis, memories, experience
– Stays awake when we sleep– Represents 90% of our total brain
capacity
Conscious vs. Unconscious• The conscious brain cannot
explain the unconscious brain– Experts could not explain what “looked”
wrong about the kouros– Braden could not explain his double fault
accuracy– Gamblers couldn’t explain why they
favored the blue deck after 10 cards
Explaining the Unconscious• Explanations not only are
inaccurate, but also hurt the unconscious brain’s ability
• When college students were asked to explain on why they liked each exotic jam, correlations dropped from .55 to .11
Imagine an inverted pyramid with a $1 bill underneath it. How
do you remove the bill without disturbing the
pyramid?
Explaining the Unconscious• Those who were asked to catalog
their reasoning, ideas, and thought process solved this problem 30% less than people who were just allowed to “think” or “thin-slice”
• The solution is to burn the dollar bill
The unconscious is so mysterious that some of the greatest athletes in the world have trouble explaining why they are
so effective…
Has anyone played tennis or baseball on a semi-competitive basis?
Explaining the Unconscious• We as humans have a storytelling
problem• Digital imaging can show movements
to 1/8th of a degree• Hands don’t roll over the ball until
well after the ball strikes the racket• Humanly impossible to track the ball
right onto the bat • The unconscious is a “locked vault”
difficult to explain with the conscious
Case Studies in a ‘blink’?• If the unconscious is proven to be
more effective than the conscious, and explaining our thoughts actually hurts our ability to solve insight problems, then...?
The “Dark Side” of ‘blink’
IAT Testhttps://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.jsp
The “Dark Side” of ‘blink’• Everyone has some type of preference
for age, weight, skin tone, religion, race
• These preferences are made from our experiences, associations, education, etc.
• The conscious is much easier to fake then the unconscious
Adaptive Errors
Errors in preference have caused…
• The United States to elect President Warren Harding in 1921, because he ‘looked’ like a presidential candidate
• Fortune 500 companies to hire CEO’s, 33% of which were over 6’2” tall, while the only 3.9% of American adult males are over 6’2”.
(an inch of height is worth $769 a year)
Adaptive Errors
A study of car salesmen in Chicago showed the following…
• Car Salesmen offered a group of identical buyers the following price:
• White men: $725 above invoice• White women: $935 above invoice• Black women: $1,195 above invoice• Black men: $1,687 above invoice
How would our own unconscious
preferences affect a strategic management
decision?
How do we overcome these unconscious
preferences if we are unable to “look inside” the vault to see them?
Primed for Action
Assemble each of the following 5 word sets into a sentence using 4 words…
1. him was worries she always2. from are Florida oranges temperature3. shoes give replace old the4. be will sweat lonely they5. sky the seamless gray is6. should now withdraw forgetfully we7. us bingo sing play let8. sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins
Primed for Action
Assemble each of the following 5 word sets into a sentence using 4 words…
1. him was worried she always2. from are Florida oranges temperature3. shoes give replace old the4. be will sweat lonely they5. sky the seamless gray is6. should now withdraw forgetfully we7. us bingo sing play let8. sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins
Primed for Action
• Study created by Psychologist John Bargh
• Same experiment done with two groups, using words such as “aggressive”, “rude”, “bold”, “bother”, and “intrude” vs. “respect”, “patiently”, “polite”, “courteous”
• Subjects were then asked to wait at a window for the results of the testing
• Can you guess what happened?
Primed for Action
• The people primed to be rude interrupted, on average, after only 5 minutes of waiting
• The people primed to be polite, NEVER interrupted
Primed for Action
• IAT has been proven time and time again to be unchangeable despite your conscious beliefs
• What if you were asked to look at pictures of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or Nelson Mandela before you took the Race Association test? Or read about successful female business women before the career/gender test?
Primed for Action
• We can change our first impressions, or alter the way we “thin-slice” by changing the experiences that shape those impressions
• This can be changed in the short term through “priming” or in the long term through cumulative experience
• Experience soaks into our unconscious and changes the way we view the world
So how do we change our strategic
management decision preferences or bias?
Trained to ‘blink’
• Think about the art experts and the tennis pro…what made their decisions so effective?
– One: They understood, accepted, and
relied on “thin-slicing”– Two: They had no natural preference or
bias that needed correction– Three: Their decisions were made in areas
of expertise and passion
Coke/Pepsi Challenge
Trained to ‘blink’
• Similar food and beverage are compared on a DOD scale (degree of difference)
• Wise and Lay’s Salt and Vinegar chips have a DOD of 8
• Pepsi and Coke have a DOD of 4 • Just over 33% of testers can pass the
triangle test (roughly equal to chance)• Any trained food taster can pass the
test 100% of the time
Strategic Management Case Studies are the
“training” of our adaptive unconscious
to make sound decisions.
Steps to Improvement
• Step 1: Acknowledge that the adaptive unconscious exists and holds great power
• Step 2: Understand your natural preferences
• Step 3: Use priming to change those preferences or at least compensate for them
• Step 4: Increase experience, education, and practice to sharpen “thin-slicing”
Thank You!!!
Discussion Questions1. Do you think you could hire someone by
‘thin-slicing’ the candidate during a brief interview? How effective would it be?
2. Would you introduce priming in the work environment to help improve customer service?
3. If a male CEO receives respect from his subordinates because of his stature, is our bias for tall male CEO’s wrong?
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