Locked-Door And Priming

In the book, blink The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, describes the “locked-door”, priming and the Warren Harding error. Throughout chapters two and three, Gladwell explains and gives examples as to why the “locked-door”, priming and the Warren Harding error can either be positive or negative. I believe that the “locked-door” and priming are in a way a symbol of how mysterious and complex our minds our. As a result, we have positive and negative consequences to priming and the “locked-door”. Gladwell talks about the side effect that “thin-slicing’’ has on people. That when a person doing the “thin-slicing” can’t seem to explain where the snap judgments come from is called the “locked-door”(64). The

Priming is basically when you take certain words or images that can have an effect on people's behavior. Gladwell describes an experiment, in which students walked into a professor's office and looked at certain words such as, “sky he seamless is gray”(53). The use of these words “primed” the brain, it contained “trigger words” such as “gray” referring to old. By the end of the experiment, the students left the room walking slower than when they entered the room. This shows that the use of certain words can manipulate someone's behavior, in this example it had a negative outcome. On the other hand, there are situations in which priming can result in being positive. For example, when my friends and I would play soccer against other schools, we would feel insecure when being out in the field. However, our coach would always encourage us by using words such as,“you got this” or “you guys are the best” these words somehow encouraged us to give it our best. At the time I didn't know that we were being primed, if I would have my outcome would have been different. I have personally never primed someone intentionally. Although there was a time where we encourage one of my younger cousins to get on a big ride by using positive words and explaining that the ride looks scarier than it is.As a result, when people are primed with encouraging words their behavior will be positive