What an interesting read. I chanced upon Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell at the library a few weeks ago. Being interested in intuition and trusting one's inner voice, I found Gladwell's research on split decision making very insightful.
Gladwell introduces study after interesting study about what goes on behind our eyes when we make "blink" decisions. He calls it thin slicing and essentially coins the term from what many of the researchers have done: taken small slices of an experience and used it to gather information. And I'm not talking about 30 minutes, but 30 seconds.
Fascinating examples of thin slicing include research done on speed dating, marriage, and professors to classical musicians and police shootings. Did you know that if you take a 30 second clip of a professor, show it on mute to a bunch of students, the students can rate whether or not its a good professor? Mind you these are students who have never had this professor. If you compare the results with actual post semester evaluations, you'll find that the thin sliced evaluations are just as accurate.
There are so many neat examples that Gladwell goes into, you are bound to look at something anew. I don't want to give too much away. Pick up your copy today!
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