« Blink » The psychology of social cognition

Fereshta Mirzada
Prof. Dr. Rene Diekstra
SSC 221 Social psychology
US English – APA Style
14-09-09
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Introduction
Have you ever seen a person on the streets that you immediately had some sort of
attraction to them? You have wondered why, you’ve never met them, and you haven’t
even made eye contact or heard the sound of their voice. But for some reason, they
interest you. You have never chosen to become interested in this person; your brain
makes snap decisions on its own without your conscious input. Perhaps it is the way that
they hold their head, or maybe it’s their walk. Even if you thought allot about it, there is
little chance that you figure out exactly “why”. Blink: The Power of Thinking without
Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, is about this initial, unconscious, spontaneous actions
and reactions to everyday situations, which is the main point of the discussion of this
paper. This book has three aims; First of all to convince the reader that decision made
very quickly can be as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately. Secondly, it
discusses when to trust our instincts and when not, and finally to convince the reader that
our snap judgment and first impressions can be educated and controlled (Gladwell, 2005,
p. 14). These three points will be discussed separately in this paper and will be concluded
with a summary.

Can quickly made decisions be as good as decisions made

after long, cautious deliberation?

In one of the beginning chapters of this book, Gladwell writes about John Gottman,
who is a researcher on the University of Washington campus. John Gotman is testing
couples for years. Through his experience he is now able to predict whether or not the
pair will still be together in 15 years. He first videotapes the couple having conversation,
then he analyse it with a coding system. Gottman says that every marriage has a
distinctive pattern, kind of marital DNA, that surfaces in any kind of meaningful
interaction (Gladwell, 2005, p. 26). By just following the conversation for some minutes,
he can predict with fairly impressive accuracy whether the couple will divorce or not.
This phenomenon is called thin slicing, which refers to the ability of our unconscious to
find patterns in situation and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience

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(Gladwell, 2005, p. 23). According to social cognition approach whenever we encounter

a new situation, we make schemas in our mind; Schemas are mental structures people use
to organize their knowledge about the social world around thems or subjects and that
influence the information people notice, think about and remember (Aronson, 2005, p.
59). These schemas are particularly helpful when we are in a situation that can be
interpreted in many different ways, and it helps us to reduce ambiguity. In the case of
Gottman, he had formed his schema that a particular marriage having these
characteristics can be ended with divorce. So every time Gottman detected that pattern,
he knew what would follow.

When should we trust our instincts, and when should we be

wary of them?

However, our thin slicing can also be corrupted, Gladwell explains. It can happen
by our likes and dislikes, prejudice and stereotypes, or even by loading too much of
information. Two forms of unconscious bias that Gladwell explains are IAT, implicit
association test, and priming. Related to this, an experiment is mentioned by Gladwell,
where participants were given one of two-scrambled sentence test (Gladwell, 2005, p.
53). One sprinkled with words like ‘aggressive’, ‘rude’, ‘disturb’ and the other with
words like ‘respect’, ‘appreciate’, ‘polite’. After the test the participants were instructed
to walk down the hall and talk to the experimenter in order to get the next assignment.
But, whenever a participant arrived down the hall John Bargh, the psychologist, made
sure that the experimenter was busy in conversation. He knew about the strange power of
unconscious influence. The result was that participants, who were given words like
‘rude’, interrupted on average after about five minutes. But of people given words like
‘polite’, around 82% never interrupted at all. That is priming, the process by which recent
experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait or concept (Aronson, 2005, p.
65). The participants that were primed had strongly influences their behavior. It can also
have very bad consequences, such as in the case of shooting of Amadou Diallo in the
Bronx in 1999 because of his African American background (Aronson, 2005, p. 57).

Can snap judgments be educated and controlled?

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Our unconscious thin slices the world around us constantly. Another example is in
times of panic our brain rely on these snap decisions based on what we have observed
unconsciously. The reactions that we get from thin slicing are often called basic instincts:
the gut feelings inside of us that we may or may not understand. At this point, Gladwell
comes to the idea that even when our conscious brings these thin slice to our conscious
attention, we often still don’t realize why we feel the way we do. The connections that
our unconscious brain makes are behind the locked doors. According to Gladwell, it is
possible to unlock these doors. This is what most professionals do. Some scientists have
studied the exact movements of facial muscles and practiced it for 7+ years. So their
ability to thin slice peoples facial expressions has developed to much higher level then
the rest of us as they are more experienced (Gladwell, 2005, p. 206). Another example
given by Gladwell is about food tasters; although we can also taste a food whether it is
good or not, but our judgment end up there. Professionals, experienced people can go
further and are able to analyze exactly what they tasted that made the food flavorful. So,
our intuitive judgments can be tought and developed by experience, training, and
knowledge.

Conclusion

Blink, which is the main focus of this paper, emphasizes the nature and origin of the first
impressions and spontaneous conclusions we experience whenever we encounter a new
situation or when we deal with a complexity or when we have to make a decision.
Gladwell challenges that the quality of decision to be directly proportional to the time we
take to make the decision. He supports his argument with an example of marriage
counselors. Further, he points out that thin-slicing has also a dark side, as stereotyping
and priming. He proceeds with research evidence on people whose
behavior were significantly influenced by priming them with different
applicable words. In response to the question when to trust our
instincts and when not, Gladwell explains that we can educate and
control our thin slicing and first impressions. Because it is based on our
experience, and environment, we can alter our experience by

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knowledge and training. He relates this concept with a study of facial

expressions, where people who invested a lot of time studying all
precise facial expressions. They could indeed read the mind of people
from thier facial expressions. As he puts it; “We learn by example and
by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of
verbal instruction.”

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Resources

Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. London, Penguin Group
Aronson, E., Wilson, T., Akert, R.(2007). Social psychology. Pearson education.