Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Introduction-Chapter 2

Reading Check

1. A Greek sculpture of a nude male (Introduction)

2. $10 million (Introduction)

3. 14 months (Introduction)

4. John Gottman (Chapter 1)

5. Five to one (Chapter 1)

6. The style and/or cadence of the operators’ clicks (Chapter 1)

7. Default on a serve (Chapter 2)

8. He gets a queasy stomach or feels “off balance.” (Chapter 2)

9. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Chapter 2)

Short Answer

1. Scientists provided their subjects with four card decks (two red, two blue) and asked them to play various games. It turned out that the red decks tended to lose, while the blue decks tended to win. Subjects declared a preference for the blue deck after about 50 cards; but it took only 10 cards for subjects to instinctively understand how the game worked. Thus, this experiment demonstrated that people tend to form intuition/instincts relatively quickly, even before their forming a conscious preference/opinion. (Introduction)

2. Blink has three purposes: (1) to demonstrate the power of snap judgments, (2) to show how they can go astray, and (3) to demonstrate how they can be enhanced. (Introduction)

Chapters 3-4

Reading Check

1. Ohio (Chapter 3)

2. 1920 (Chapter 3)

3. Because Harding was good-looking and affable, he appealed to people’s stereotypes of what a good leader should look like. (Chapter 3)

4. Six feet (Chapter 3)

5. Paul Van Riper (Chapter 4)

6. To accept everything that happens onstage (Chapter 4)

7. Verbal overshadowing (Chapter 4)

8. Lee Goldman; he was a cardiologist. (Chapter 4)

Short Answer

1. Implicit-association tests measure the effects of bias. Gladwell offers up the following example of one such exam, which asks test takers to place a series of words and pictures into one of two categories, “European American or Bad” and “African American or Good" (141). The items are Hurt, Evil, Glorious, a picture of a Black man, a picture of a white man, and Wonderful. The test is repeated, except the categories are reversed: “European American or Good” and “African American or Bad" (141). Most people, Black or white, are much faster at sorting the second test, where “European American” is associated with “Good.” This test demonstrates racially charged implicit bias against Black people. (Chapter 3)

2. The Millennium Challenge was a simulation war game from 2000. In it, the “Red Team” (lead by former Marine Paul Van Riper, representing the Middle Eastern forces) was to face the “Blue Team” (representing the US). In the simulation, Blue Team sails an armada into the Persian Gulf, issues ultimatums, and knocks out Red Team’s communication antennae. Red Team responds by using couriers to communicate, then sends out small boats to monitor the Blue Team’s ships, and finally launches a surprise attack, firing cruise missiles that overwhelm the armada and sink 16 vessels. In a real war, 20,000 soldiers and sailors would have died. Riper’s in-the-moment decisions beat the US military’s carefully thought-out logical plans. Gladwell includes this simulation as an example of how fast-and-frugal thinking can be beneficial. (Chapter 4)

Chapter 5-Afterword

Reading Check

1. Paul McGuiness (Chapter 5)

2. Sip-tests (Chapter 5)

3. Imperial Margarine (Chapter 5)

4. A 15-point scale (Chapter 5)

5. The officers who were chasing him (Chapter 6)

6. Abbie Conant (Conclusion)

7. A screen, to conceal the accused (Afterword)

Short Answer

1. Chapter 5 discusses fast-and-frugal thinking as it affects product marketing, whether the product is music, soda, or margarine. Once they realize humans tend to make snap decisions about purchases, marketers refine their products’ packaging and advertising to make use of our tendency to employ mental shortcuts when shopping. That said, some products are so innovative that they seem “bad” at first. As such, marketers must learn to manipulate and deal with customers’ snap judgments about a product, to hook them quickly. (Chapter 5)

2. Gladwell believes Diallo died because the police officers—two of who were new to the force and the neighborhood—became overly excited and catastrophically misread the situation in a panic. Diallo’s death was ultimately a result of bias and fast-and-frugal thinking that went terribly wrong. (Chapter 6)