Take a moment to think about how you make a first impression to somebody. Whether it be to an attractive female/male or a new teacher, we all sit there pondering whether or not that first impression was astonishing, acceptable, or mediocre. Ever heard the saying, “You only have one opportunity to make a first impression” by Natalie Massenet? This quote should prove not only to yourself, but to everyone around you that the first impression is everlasting. If you have ever badgered a first impression, you know how ridiculously hard it is to gain back trust and respect. I agree with Malcolm Gladwell in many ways, as well as disagreeing in various substances. Gladwell interprets some of the many ways we use “thin-slicing,” how too much information …show more content…
Thin-slicing is described in many contexts throughout the novel such as speed dating, war games, music, divorce, movies, and gambling. This concept is often shown by making quick, unplanned decisions and that it is essentially the same as planned and thought out proposals. Although thin-slicing can be used in a numerous amount of good ways, it can also be misjudged because of peoples likes, dislikes, bigotry, and stereotypes. We use thin-slicing without thinking about it, hence the title “thinking without thinking”. Admittedly, we have all tried to think about thinking and …show more content…
I believe that Galdwell is absolutely right in the fact that we all use a part of the mind called the “adaptive unconscious.” Adaptive unconscious is “thought to be a set of mental processes that influence judgment and decision making in a way that it is inaccessible to introspective awareness.” We use our adaptive unconsciousness to make quick decisions while still being confident and cautious. Gladwell uses the Greek art historians and The Getty along with Gottman and his divorce predictions as an example of adaptive unconscious. I can apply this to my life in a way that Gladwell describes in his quote, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” I think that this quote means that you do not need to be the genius of the room to make the smartest decisions. Additionally, the quote means that if you have the understanding of certain concepts then you can be just as “knowledgeable” as people that have been studying several things for
Malcolm Gladwell, in the nonfiction book Outliers, claims that success stems from where you come from, and to find that you must look beyond the individual. Malcolm Gladwell develops and supports his claim by defining an outlier, then providing an example of how Stewart Wolf looked beyond the individual, and finally by giving the purpose of the book Outliers as a whole. Gladwell’s purpose is to explain the extenuating circumstances that allowed one group of people to become outliers in order to inform readers on how to be successful. The author writes in a serious and factual tone for the average person in society of both genders and all ethnicities who wants to become successful in life.
In earlier eras, philosophers have strove to think of efficient, faster ways to approach every day matters. In Schulz’s essay she brings up the point that our mind “despite of its aptitude for error-it works better than anything else” (365). Our brains have evolved over time to a way of ease and correctness even though the risk is still run of being predisposed to error. She brought up the philosopher Descartes and how he wanted to be an “ideal thinker.” This involves approaching every manner with a neutral mind and be active in finding evidence that both supports and counters a claim. It also means accepting and even altering a conclusion that was previously made. Foer on the other hand, makes the claim that our society’s ability to remember has slowly dwindled by means of outsourcing of ourselves. “Today, when we live in a deluge of printed words” we have no need to remember everything when we have tools that do it for us (164). We have phones that remember people’s names, addresses, and phone numbers. We have GPS systems that make remembering routes a thing of the
Gladwell, being a great story teller, uses the art of storytelling in order to appeal to the reader’s emotions. These stories are often presented in the beginning of the writing, to engage the reader by appealing to their emotions by making them feel anger,
To most people the blink of an eye is a very short span of time. Most people would not believe, however, that critical information can be gathered and a conclusion made in the blink of an eye. In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell proves that split second decisions or what some call “gut decisions” can be just as reliable if not more reliable than drawn out, researched conclusions. Gladwell believes that this book will revolutionize the thought process and the world, he proves this by using exemplification and compare and contrast.
Technology has had a negative impact on this generation- we have lost and forgotten many things because of it. In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, he discusses the difference between social media activism and “real” activism and the loss of human connection that he has identified. He believes that with social media activism, we lack the connections a community should have because we don’t get together in person- we are satisfied with being connected through technology. He also thinks that as time goes on, we will only get worse when referring to the ideas that we are delusional because the issues we fight about (such as getting phones taken away) aren’t as important as we think.
Malcolm Gladwell’s “Troublemakers” is an article in which he explores the way societies make generalizations. Malcolm explains how Ontario has banned pit bulls due to a boy being attacked and people viewing that one example to be enough to distinguish all pit bulls as vicious and bloodthirsty. He goes on to employ that all dogs even resembling pit bulls or that have some pit bull mixed into them have been banned as well, because anything that looks like a pit bull has now been deemed dangerous for the people in that society. Not only does Malcolm point out other ways societies generalize people, like racial profiling a terrorist, but he distinguishes how steps could have been taken to eliminate the threat of the pit bull but it seemed to just
“People don't rise from nothing....It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't”(Gladwell 18).
In the article Threshold of Violence published by The New Yorker Magazine, author Malcolm Gladwell alludes to the cause of school shootings and why they transpire. Gladwell tries to make sense of the epidemic by consulting a study of riots by stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter. Granovetter sought to understand “why people do things that go against who they are or what they think is right, for instance, why typically non-violent, law-abiding people join a riot”(Granovetter). He concluded that people’s likelihood of joining a riot is determined by the number of people already involved. The ones who start a riot don’t need anyone else to model this behavior for them that they have a “threshold” of zero. But others will riot only if someone
An individual’s actions are a direct result and product of his or her environment and context. An individual's reaction to their situation is a product of their environment and context. This radical concept is brought up and examined in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Power of Context: The Rise and Fall of New York City Crime. It is is shown in real life examples in both Leslie Bell’s book Hard to Get: Twenty Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom and Jean Twenge An Army of One: Me. The concept that one’s actions are affected by his or her environment and context is a radical idea due to it going against the more traditional and widely accepted ideology that an individual is the product of their upbringing and past experiences and
“Desirable difficulties” is a notion taken straight from the psychological literature. They were interested in that in the context of learning theory. It is not always the case that if I make the task of learning something easier for you, your performance will improve like in Gladwell the book says “conventional wisdom holds that a disadvantage is something that ought to be avoided-that it is a setback or a difficulty that lives you worse off than you would be otherwise. But that is not always the case.” Meaning the having dyslexia is not a difficulty the can’t be change, nothing is telling you the we have a cure, however is saying the you can work with it and make it better. There are sometimes cases where your performance will improve if I make the task of learning more difficult for you. Not always, but what they do is draw a line between difficulties that are ultimately desirable and those that are not “if I could read a lot faster, it would make it a lot of things that I do easier”. I agree with Malcolm Gladwell’s book is explaining how dyslexia keeps people standing their thoughts, to have better openness,
What would happen if our world today was monotonous, sorrowful, and grey? What if no one was here to form new creations, and think of bold ideas? Would triumph have a definition? Would there be outliers in our world today? We are constantly thinking, always generating new ideas and forming new thoughts. People even proceed by creating inventions, and building objects no one would of thought would be made today. But, what we don’t perceive is how they became successful and how they took advantage of the moment that was given to them. In the novel, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, the author explains that an outlier is one who is given an opportunity and knows how to take advantage. He believes that in order for a person to be successful they need at least ten thousand hours of hard work and effort in order to succeed at a skill. It is clear to me that like Malcolm Gladwell, I believe
Once in a while, it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to. Gladwell believes that cultural legacies are powerful forces. Cultural legacies are the customs of a family or a group of people, that is inherited through the generations. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, Cultural legacies is something that’s been passed down for generations to generations. It depends on what type of legacies was passed that will affect a person. If a good legacy was passed down, someone can keep that legacy going by trying hard at keeping the legacies going. If a bad legacy was passed down; I believe that cultural legacies can be altered or changed, by good working habits, determination, and a positive mindset to succeed. Culture can affect either positively or negatively, but we have the power to turn our cultural
We all understand what success is, but what allows for a person to become successful? Malcolm Gladwell wrote his book Outliers to study this topic and settle once and for all why some people are more successful than others. Gladwell uses the success stories of people throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to discover just exactly what it is that allows for one to be successful. He explains that there is much more to becoming successful than just natural talent and skill. Gladwell states in Outliers that success is the product of the time we were born, our dedication, and most of all where we come from.
Generalization is used as a weapon to justify hasty judgements or actions executed by society and its individuals. To generalize is to make something more widespread or common, according to the dictionary. A girl who is blond, part of the middle class, and white. That sentence alone creates a broad generalization about who I am as a person. When society needs to make a quick decision about something or someone we tend to veer towards generalizing or even stereotyping because it’s easier than trying to distinguish specific aspects of that decision.
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” A first impression is a person’s initial mental image of another person. It is formed upon the very first meeting of two people. Everyone makes and receives first impressions. Our physical appearance is the biggest factor that influences others’ first impression toward someone else.