Blink Response

Blink addresses many different themes we have talked about in class, but one I found most fascinating, and one that Blink gave an interesting viewpoint of, is the theme of race and equality. Blink uses scientific studies to reveal how humans view race. One study shows that when participants are instructed to give their race before taking a test, African-Americans who are involved score considerably lower than African-Americans who aren’t instructed to list their race. I remember taking the ITBS and filling in the test booklet with lots of information about my background, including race. This causes me to consider how accurate test results really are and if they really reflect how knowledgeable a student is. After all, marking down your race before a test doesn’t affect how smart you are. This also makes me wonder how many other aspects of society, especially ones that could influence inaccurate stereotyping, are affected by minor details like this that we have simply overlooked.

    Another common theme we have discussed in class is about the American Dream. For many, the idea of being successful is having a lot of money or running a company. A disturbing study mentioned in Blink suggests that achieving this dream might be easier for some than others-- not because of hard work toward achieving this goal, but because of one’s genetics. The study reveals that white men of above-average height are more likely to become the CEO of a company than men of average or below average height and of other races. In reality, the height or race of a person doesn’t affect how knowledgeable or strong of a leader they are. There is something wired in the human mind that says, “He looks strong and he is white. He must be a great leader.” I think we should use this knowledge of our uncontrolled bias and work towards creating a system in which this bias does not affect our decision making. Maybe performing job interviews over the computer without actually seeing the candidate in person would reduce the effect of this bias.

    Overall I thoroughly enjoyed Blink and I would recommend it to students with the option of reading it in this class next year. The book encourages the reader to question the common methods we use in society to get information, such as mentioning your race before a test, and even how previous experiences influence our subconscious to change our attitudes and how we act towards others. On the other hand the book was slightly repetitive in that it was all about different studies that sort of proved the same concept that unconscious is a greater influence on how we act and view the world.

2nd Blink Response

I think that Blink first and foremost explains how all the different eras of American culture came about. For example, for the romantics, we read several pieces from that era and filled out the synthesis or ‘boxy things’ and we developed an idea of the mindset of that era. I think this is also how the people OF that era also developed their mindset about the era they were living in. The ideas were spread and ingrained into their subconscious mind, just as commercials and magazine ingrain ideas about ideals, race, and beauty in modern day America.
I like the idea is that the problem with the world is that there is no such thing as good or bad. A certain thing can only be good relative to something bad. Thus, there aren’t really ‘bad’ people out there making ‘bad’ decisions. Those individuals that we find to be scary evil bad guys don’t think of themselves as scary evil bad guys. They think they’re normal people, their ideas are right and ours are wrong, just as the opposite is true for us. Thus nobody is really fixing or correcting our bad decisions because we A)Don’t think that we’re the problem and B) It’s in our unconscious mind, locked behind closed doors. For example, that racism test that was brought up, just mere milliseconds was enough to show that society has had an influence on that mans perception of race, and that he has more trouble associating black people with good things, even though he does not consciously feel that way at all.
Now just as I believe there is no real concrete decider of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’, I think that it makes sense that morality would apply here too. However, what if this amazing automatic processing is neurological, tangible, object of human morality? What if that’s what Emmerson discovered? I think Emmerson was on the same path as the other of this book at realizing automatic processing and that our conscious is a glorious work of art that calculates and executes millions of complex tasks and observations in order for us to survive everyday. Also, as demonstrated in the war simulator training, snap judgements can sometimes be much more effective than carefully thought out decisions. Emmerson was on the same page believing that we should just trust our instincts and do our work because we have glorious minds that can do extraordinary things and even make better decisions in mere seconds than our conscious mind can.
       All in all, I absolutely adored this book and it’s concepts like these and relating the noosphere to the complex system locked away in each and everyone of our unconscious minds that I was to study as a researcher later in life. Blink was absolutely fascinating.

Race in Blink

Which of our central questions does your text address most thoroughly?

Race and Equality

Even though Blink does not primarily address the issue of race at first glance, it reveals deep psychological findings that have meaning in today's time. It also harkens back to the racist times in America, such as the attitudes expressed in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The results are such that the idea of race exists not only in outward behaviors, like those in Huckleberry Finn, but deep down in the subconscious. For example, researchers had subjects take the Race IAT test, a test that determines the level of racial prejudice in a person. The test reveals that not only does the test uncover the conscious attitudes of a person, but also the unconscious attitudes – or, in other words, “the immediate, automatic associations that tumble out before we’ve even had time to think.” Gladwell finds that 80 percent of those who take the test have pro-white associations.

Because of these findings, I think about the issue of race that was raised in the previous texts that we read and discusses, most notably Huck Finn. If 80 percent of people who take the test are pro-white (and I’m making an assumption here), then I wonder about the attitudes of the people described in Huck Finn. Considering the actions of people back then in Huck Finn’s time, would 90 percent be pro-white? Maybe closer to 100 percent?

This issue also begs the question if society today is moving towards more racial equality or not. Sure, we have the Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination of those of color, but does that really mean we are equal? Are we as racist today as in Huck Finn’s time, with just a single law in place to say that we can’t be discriminatory towards those of color? Are we truly making progress towards total racial equality?

Gladwell also found that when car dealers provided initial offerings to those of both white and colored skin, that those of colored skin often were offered a higher price than those of white skin. People think that colored men (and women) are suckers. Maybe we today, as a society, are not lynching black men for crimes that we think that they commit, but we are still committing crimes ourselves today by our discriminatory actions towards those of color.

Blink

This book is absolutely fabulous in every sense of the word. He has taken a topic that most people would turn their nose up at because it's 'sciency' and 'nerdy' and made it incredible. You can't put it down. When you read this book, none of the research is too complex for the reader to understand. This ability to communicate such important scientific information in an enticing, comprehensible manner is so so so important.
I completely agree with Becca’s response to this book, relating it to romanticism and Emmerson. I think what the author is ultimately trying to tell us is that we need to be ‘awake’ and do our ‘work’. We need to trust our instincts more often than think things through thoroughly in order to make better decisions. Which is contrary to what we’ve been taught by society for most of our lives, especially during childhood. It’s in the nature of children to act impulsively and instinctually, while the mother or father constantly reminds the child to slow down and think. We are trained from a very early age that it’s not only important to make good decisions, but that we must think slowly and deliberately in order to make them.  
This is going to bother me until I figure out who said this, but this book me reminds me of a quote that goes somewhere along the lines of “Trust your instinct, not your mind. For your mind is only as old as you are but instinct is thousands of years old.” I feel as though this saying and Blink go hand in hand together. We learn by correcting our past mistakes. We think of our elders as wiser because they have been around longer to make more mistakes and learn from them. Instincts has had thousands of years to evolve and improve in order for the human race to survive, thus it is is smarter than we consciously are.
The prejudice quizzes were also extraordinarily enlightening. Even though people can complete all the quizzes properly relatively quickly, those few fractions of a second in which we slow down once we have to associate words that don’t follow society’s general stereotypes reveal that we are racist/sexist to some degree. Which is something a lot of us do not want to come to terms with.

Romanticism in Blink

The thesis of Blink is that our first impressions, our gut feelings are the most reliable way to make decisions in our spheres of influence. This is similar to the romantics, who claim that the best way to evaluate situations is based not on rational decision calculus, but rather based on our emotional response. The way that Blink differs from the romantics, is that Blink comes to its conclusions scientifically. Whereas the romantics thought that following one’s instinct was good because it brought one closer to God, the conclusions of Blink come from innumerable studies and empirical evidence. It then begs the question, would the romantics agree with Blink? Surely they would agree with the thesis, that people should follow their instincts, but would they have a problem with the book’s epistemology? The way that Blink generates knowledge comes from rational thought. The way that the romantics generated knowledge came from emotional introspection. I think that Emerson would welcome the conclusions of the studies cited in Blink, but he would also think them unnecessary, as one can come to the same conclusion through meditation.

My opinion of Blink

I don't usually read scientific book but this is one that I would definitely recommend. One aspect in particular that I have enjoyed is the author's style. Gladwell is good at connecting with the reader. I actually feel as if he is talking to me and I think that engages the reader more than just stating facts. I also like the fact that he provides test/riddles for the reader. He talks about how most people react to  different phsycological tests and we can actually take them ourselves to see how we compare and get a better understanding of how they work. In addition, the author keeps that book moving at a moderate pace. He doesn't dwell on any one topic for too long and he finds ways to connect them to each other as the book progresses. I don't think that there is anything I dislike about this book. It is a science book so it can be a little dry at times due to the lack of a plot or story but that is to be expected and I think Gladwell does a good job of using everyday language and explaining technical terms.

Gender and Race

So far, I have enjoyed reading this book. A section that I thought was interesting was when the author talked about how people are unconciously biased. We may not realize that we have certain prejudices but I certainly did after I read over the tests that the author provided. People may say they arn't biased towards a certain race or gender but unconsciously, we are. Due to books, movies, t.v., and magazines, we have certain images of what people should be like that are from a certain back round, race, or gender. The first time I read through the author's example of the story about the son and the doctor, I was immediatly confused. After thinking for a couple seconds, my first guess was that the son had a stepfather or two Dads. It never occured to me that the doctor could be a woman. What this test did was make me think quickly about what my first image of a typical doctor was. Mine was male and I'm guessing a lot of other peoples' first impression was that too. A second test the author included was one where I had a list of names that I had to put into 2 collumns:Male and Female. This I found I could acccomplish easily. Then, the author gave us a new list and new columns: Male or Family and Female or Career. These two categories had a list of words with them that were either jobs or names. I found this to be harder because we usually associate males with jobs and females with family. The author included a couple other tests that I will not go into detail with but they also supported his point .