Review Chapter 3 and 4 of the Blink

hi guys.. welcome back to my blog, in this article I would like continue the previouse article. And this article the content is review from the book Blink in chapter 3 and 4. Let's to read..

Chapter 3 (The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall For Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men)

Warren Harding is, notoriously, one of the worst presidents in American history—an incompetent man who, Gladwell argues, only won the presidency because he dazzled the populace with his face and demeanor and because he had a “master puppeteer,” Harry Daugherty, controlling him. It’s important to notice that for once, Gladwell begins a chapter with an example of a mistaken judgment (i.e., electing Warren Harding) rather than a brilliant insight, setting the tone for the rest of the chapter. 

In this chapter, Gladwell will clarify and qualify some of the arguments he’s made so far. While continuing to argue that snap judgments are an important part of human nature and a powerful tool for understanding the world, he will acknowledge that at times, snap judgments can be prejudicial and objectively wrong.  

The reason that subjects took longer to complete the second version of the IAT is that this version of the test went against the stereotypical, sexist association of women with domesticity and the home. Thus, the results of the IAT suggest that people use stereotyping as a kind of “mental shortcut”—they use convenient stereotypes about races, genders, etc., to make quick decisions. A further implication of the IAT is that people are more likely to behave in a bigoted way when they’re in a hurry or when they’re in a high-stakes situation: when the pressure is on, people fall back on stereotypes instead of using their rational minds. 

Golomb’s record as a car salesman is interesting because it shows how thin-slicing and rapid cognition need not be prejudicial. Golomb sizes people up in a few seconds, essentially judging a book by its cover. And yet, Golomb doesn’t (supposedly) let stereotypes cloud his judgment: he avoids the Warren Harding problem (i.e., making the wrong decision about a person based on limited evidence about that person) by considering all the superficial evidence about his clients (their mannerisms, facial cues, etc.). In short, Gladwell argues, there’s a right way and a wrong way to judge a book by its cover.  

Following the evidence Gladwell has already considered, it would seem that car dealers are just as susceptible to errors of the adaptive unconscious as any other person, like the subjects who took the IAT. Most car dealers may not be overtly, consciously racist (in fact, Gladwell argues, it’s pretty unlikely that they all are), but like many people they can allow preconceptions to cloud their judgment. Of course, it’s also worth noting that just because someone is a college graduate it doesn’t mean they appear intelligent on the “snap-judgment” level, so this caveat doesn’t really invalidate claims of racism or sexism (as Gladwell claims). 

Put in “Blink terminology,” a bad car dealer will thin-slice one small aspect of a person’s appearance, and then extrapolate irrational conclusions from that evidence.  

At the end of this chapter, Gladwell suggests that it’s possible to fight unconscious discrimination—and, in general, that it’s possible to strengthen and train the adaptive unconscious. If it’s possible to condition the unconscious mind to respond negatively to images of black people, it might also be possible to train the unconscious to respond differently. In general, Gladwell is trying to argue that, although the adaptive unconscious is far from perfect, it’s also possible to improve it and use it as a force for good. 

Chapter 4 (Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory: Creating Structure for Spontaneity)

Paul Van Riper will be the “main character” of this chapter: an excellent example of how improvisation and snap judgments can be important elements of success. 

The Millennium Challenge has become notorious in the world of military strategy because it inadvertently predicted the war in Iraq: soldiers were being trained to fight a rogue Middle-Eastern dictator, not unlike Saddam Hussein. The Millennium Challenge is also a good illustration of how perfect information and careful considerations of the evidence aren’t always useful components of military strategy; there are times when perfect information can interfere with the decision-making process. 
Operation Net Assessment arguably symbolizes the dangers of conscious, perfectly rational thinking—as Gladwell will show, perfect rationality and evidence-weighing aren’t always as powerful and effective as people think. In short, the Millennium Challenge is a great “case study” for the clash between the conscious, rational mind (as represented by the Blue Team’s military strategy) and the unconscious, intuitive mind (as represented by Van Riper’s Red Team). 

Right away, the Millennium Challenge exemplifies some of the advantages of intuitive decision-making and some of the pitfalls of rational evidence-weighing. The Blue Team believed that it was making the right decision, but in fact it was wasting valuable time on predictions that turned out to be inaccurate. Van Riper’s greatest strength as a commander was his unpredictability—again and again, Van Riper was able to outwit Operation Net Assessment, perhaps suggesting the limitations of excessive rationality. Like the Getty experts who evaluated the Greek statue, the Blue Team allowed evidence and information to cloud their judgment. 

Improvisational comedy is a great example of the methods of spontaneity. It might seem contradictory to talk about “methods of spontaneity,” (since, one could argue, spontaneity is by definition not methodical) but in fact, Gladwell shows, certain rules govern spontaneous behavior and can provide the proper environment for it to best arise and function. 

There is a big difference between spontaneity and randomness. Randomness is chaotic, muddled, and by definition impossible to plan. Spontaneity, on the other hand, can be rehearsed and trained for. For example, Van Riper spent many years as a soldier perfecting his ability to be spontaneous under pressure. While it may seem like a contradiction to say that spontaneity can be practiced, Gladwell argues that there’s no contradiction at all. Even if spontaneous behavior itself will always be unpredictable and to some extent random, it’s possible to perfect the development of the proper conditions of spontaneity.  

It might seem like poor leadership for a military commander to do nothing after hearing gunfire in the distance. But in fact, Van Riper’s decision to do nothing reflects years of experience and careful consideration. Van Riper recognizes that by contacting his soldiers in the field, he might be interfering with their ability to resolve a problem. 

Not unlike a good comedic improviser, Van Riper tried to optimize the conditions of spontaneity for his soldiers: instead of weighing his soldiers down with excessive orders and questions, he gave them the space and the freedom to “work it out.”  

Gladwell argues again that rationality can interfere with spontaneity: the act of verbalizing a stranger’s face can prevent you from visualizing that stranger’s face (although, of course, Gladwell’s example here might not apply to everyone). To put it another way, the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind occupy two different “territories,” and when one part of the mind intrudes on the other, problems arise. 

Verbal overshadowing is an important concept because it shows how excessive rationality can undermine the overall power of the mind. Solving a puzzle or a brainteaser (or, to bring it back to Van Riper, winning a war) isn’t necessarily a rational act; sometimes, the only way to succeed is to use the unconscious mind. Thus excessive rationality and verbalization can undermine the unconscious and prevent it from discovering the solution to a problem.  

As the example of the firefighters suggests, rational, logical decision-making has a notable disadvantage: it takes too long. In the heat of the moment (whether in a fire or on the battlefield) people rarely have the time to consider all the evidence fully. Therefore, the best course of action is often to make a “gut decision.” During the Millennium Challenge, for instance, Van Riper succeeded as a commander because he excelled at gut decisions—whereas the Blue Team failed because it relied too heavily on a thorough, information-heavy decision-making process. 

Another good example of a high-stakes, “heat of the moment” situation is a hospital diagnosis. Often, doctors and nurses only have a short time to decide whether a patient has heart disease (or any other condition) or not, and the consequences of a bad diagnosis are obviously enormous. As the passage makes clear, the Cook County Hospital had a strategy for avoiding wrong diagnoses: 1) admitting too many people, and 2) asking lots and lots of questions. Gladwell will show how this strategy actually interfered with the process of diagnosing patients.  

The strategy of Reilly and Goldman is basically to put the idea of “thin-slicing” into practice—but on purpose, and in often life-or-death situations. 

By choosing to adopt the decision tree of Lee Goldman, Reilly essentially was ordering his doctors to make life-or-death decisions based on an deliberately limited amount of information: ECG readings, history of heart disease, etc. Before Reilly, doctors at the Cook County Hospital had a different strategy: obtain as much information about the patient as possible. And yet, when the results came in, it was clear that Goldman’s method was the best. By cutting down the diagnosis process to the bare minimum of questions, Goldman encouraged doctors to work quickly and efficiently, and helped them avoid the pitfalls of “overthinking” the diagnosis.  

Gladwell acknowledges that Goldman’s findings seem very counterintuitive. One might assume that the best medical diagnosis uses as much evidence as possible. However, Gladwell argues that sometimes, more evidence is bad: as we saw with the Millennium Challenge, excessive evidence can cloud the decision-making process and result in bad decisions. Thorough decision-making is also slowly and inefficient—a major problem at the overcrowded, understaffed Cook County Hospital. By convincing his doctors not to overthink their diagnoses, Reilly improved the overall quality of his hospital. 

The study reiterates the basic theme of this chapter: more information isn’t necessarily better. Excessive information is also a problem because it encourages people to be irrationally confident in their decisions. A psychologist who makes a bad diagnosis but thinks she’s right is probably more harmful than a psychologist who makes the wrong diagnosis and isn’t sure if she’s right or not—the second psychologist will be more open to changing her opinion later on.  

Gladwell is not saying that instinct is always better than rationality—just as he’s not arguing that rationality is always preferable to instinct. Rather, Gladwell argues that the best decisions incorporate elements of both rationality and intuition. For this reason, it can be dangerous to incorporate too much information into one’s decision, because excessive information interferes with intuition. 

The chapter closes with an elegant example of how “too much information” can harm the decision-making process. The customers who had dozens of jam options never reached a decision about which jam to buy: they just continued to weigh the evidence. By the same logic, the Blue Team commanders may have wasted too much time weighing the evidence and carefully considering all available information—while Van Riper acted quickly and instinctively, devastating the Blue Team in the process.  

The chapter closes with another illustration of people’s bias against instinct and intuition. The lesson of the Millennium Challenge should have been that intuition plays an important role in warfare. But the Pentagon refused to give the adaptive unconscious the respect it deserved—instead, it concluded that in warfare, more information and technology is always better. Gladwell implies that the mistaken conclusions of the Millennium Challenge played a major role in the fiasco of America’s military intervention in the Middle East during the Bush presidency of the 2000s. The American military believed that it could use its superior firepower and perfect information to easily depose Saddam Hussein. But, as readers of Blink probably know well, American intervention in the Middle East didn’t go according to plan—suggesting that there’s always an element of randomness and spontaneity in warfare. 

well, this is the review from Blink in the chapter 3 and 4, so waiting for the next review ..

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