This week is a psychological write-off. It's one of those weeks when nothing eventful happens, no memories will be encoded, and all the days just blur together. Do you ever experience this? I'm pretty sure I've blotted out entire years pre-2004, for no real reason except a lack of material.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. My social psychology professor in third year highly recommended the book to our class and I didn't remember to pick it up until a coworker recently raved about his books. Blink is subtitled "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" and is largely a compilation of research findings along with some pretty interesting insights on the human psyche. This book is all about how it is often best to make snap decisions based on our intuition or gut-instinct vs. dissecting, researching, and forming an almost scientific conclusion. Having too much information can bog us down in details instead of seeing the whole picture, and trying to defend a choice or describe something abstract can make us end up either changing our mind (if you can verbalize more reasons to choose A over B, even though you liked B immediately, you will end up choosing A) or forget details altogether.
Examples:
- The Getty Museum purchased a Greek kouros (ancient statue of a male) for about $7 million based on lengthy and in-depth lab studies of the piece to determine its authenticity. The results were said to be conclusive. However, before the purchase, a few experts felt like something just wasn't right within seconds of seeing the piece. They couldn't quite put their finger on why, some saying it appeared "fresh". As it turns out, it was indeed a fake after all.
- Millennium Challenge: a $250 million wargame put on by the States to test out the latest military and surveillance technologies. Blue team vs. red team. The blue team has every gadget imaginable, including satellites. The red team, led by a "rogue officer" (all pretend), does things the old-fashioned way - not even using radio communication. Who should win? The blue team, of course. They have every conceivable advantage. Who actually wins? The red team. War requires making snap decisions in situations that are out of your control, not overanalyzing ever piece of data before making your next move.
- Coca Cola vs. Pepsi. The Pepsi Challenge showed marketers that consumers overwhelmingly chose Pepsi; however, this was based on a person's first impression of tasting Pepsi and didn't take into account drinking habits--that when someone drinks a beverage, they don't just take one sip. They drink the whole can. And Coke is what more people can handle drinking more of--one of the reasons why Coke has better sales.
These were just a few topics covered by the book and there are several more interesting studies to read about. There is a researcher named John Gottman who, after doing so much observation and research on the dynamics of married couples, can predict within seconds of exposure to a married couple's conversation whether or not they will divorce in five years. He has an accuracy of 90%.
Blink is all about the power of the subconscious mind. (How Freudian!) The brain picks up on tiny details that you don't consciously notice and makes you gravitate towards a certain object or judgement for reasons beyond your immediate grasp. Give your snap decisions a bit more credit and maybe you'll be better off! It depends on the situation though...but, if you are an expert in something like ancient art, you are so well-learned and attuned to the subject that you can automatically react to a fake sculpture (subconscious) before your mind catches up with the reasons why (conscious).
And phew, goodbye blogck...for now.
i think you should write a book. no joke.
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