Reading Group Discussion Questions—Blink

Have you ever had a feeling that a couple's future is successful or doomed just by witnessing a brief exchange between them? What do you think you're picking up on?

Many couples seek counseling from a therapist, a priest, rabbi etc. But do you think a couple about to get married should go and see , the psychologist who can predict with a 95% accuracy whether a couple will be together in 15 years just by watching an hour of their interaction? If you were about to be married or could go back to before you were, would you want to see Gottman and find out his prediction?

The central argument of the chapter is that our unconscious is able to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience. This is called 'thin-slicing.'' What kinds of phenomena, if any, do not lend themselves to 'thin-slicing?'

Gottman decodes a couple's relationship and predicts by identifying their patterns of behavior. Can we change our natural and unconscious patterns of behavior? Would awareness of these patterns with our partner be enough to avert an inevitable break-up?

Do you think you could hire someone by 'thin-slicing' the candidate during a brief interview? Or do you think this would only work for certain kinds of jobs or perhaps, only certain kinds of people?

The psychologist, Samuel Gosling, shows how 'thin-slicing' can be used to judge people's personality when he uses the dorm room observers. Visualize your bedroom right now. What does it say about you?

If scrolling through someone's iPod or scanning their bookshelf can tell us more about that individual, what other kinds of 'thin-slicing' exercises could reveal aspects of their personality?

Art historian Bernard Berenson or billionaire are examples of practiced 'thin-slicers' who have made highly pressured snap judgments based on nothing more than a curious ringing in the ears or a back spasm. What kind of physical, inexplicable cues have you or others you know of experienced which led to successful decision-making?

Priming refers to when subtle triggers influence our behavior without our awareness of such changes. An example of this occurs in Spain where authorities introduced classical music on the subway and after doing so, watched vandalism and littering drastically decrease. Can you think of situations when priming occurs?

Should we introduce priming in schools to encourage better behavior or more diligent work patterns? What about the service industry? Could employers prime their staff to be more polite to customers?

If an individual's behavior is being influenced unbeknownst to them, when can priming become manipulative? How is it different from the controversy a few years back when cinemas used subliminal advertising during previews to 'encourage' people to buy from the confectionary stand?

Malcolm Gladwell was born in in 1963 and raised in Canada. From his early childhood, Gladwell was intrigued by the written word. The son of two published authors, he was raised in a home without a television set. As a child he read the Bible, and at the age of sixteen he won a writing competition for his written interview with God. While still in high school, Gladwell published an article in Ad Hominem: A Journal of Slander and Critical Opinion.

However, Gladwell never thought of journalism as a career. After he graduated with a history degree from the in 1984, he tried to get a job in the advertising business but had little success. On a whim, he accepted a job at a conservative magazine, The American Spectator, but he was eventually fired because he overslept. In 1987, he joined the staff of , where he was a science writer and later the New York bureau chief. In 1996, Gladwell became a staff writer at magazine.

Although Gladwell is generally considered a business writer, particularly after the publication of his first book, : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), he prefers to think of himself as someone who observes the things that most people take for granted. The Tipping Point spent twenty-eight weeks on best-seller list and more than two years on Business Week's best-seller list. In this book, Gladwell provided a map to describe how ideas travel through word-of- mouth and connections, which he dubbed connectors, mavens, and salesmen. The book combined his obsession with the mundane, such as subway graffiti, television programming, and the indicators of a successful marriage, with his ability to turn such subjects into fascinating stories. Gladwell's second book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), examines how people process the information they receive through first impressions and how these impressions, which Gladwell calls rapid cognition, can be channeled into productive thinking.

Principal Works

nonfiction The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, 2000 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, 2005

Excerpted from: Malcolm Gladwell. Guide to Literary Masters and Their Works. Great Neck Publishing 2007: accessed January 3, 2011 from Literary Reference Center. Ebsco, 2010.