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Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking

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In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, By Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell touches on concepts that provoke thought. Gladwell has, as George Orwell said, ¨[the] Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peopleś idea of the kind of society that they should strive for¨. Gladwell successfully convinces the reader that ¨decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately¨ (p.14) and ¨that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled”(p.15) by using studies and experiments to support his ideas, exemplification to further explain a discussed concept, and rhetorical questions to interact with the readers. Studies and experiments are commonly used …show more content…

Gosling had close friends of the students, who have ¨thick slices”of experience with the students, as well as strangers, who have ¨thin slices¨ of experience with the students based on the observations of the students’ dorm rooms , fill out a questionnaire measuring the studentś personalities. The result of the experiment was that ¨the strangers ended up doing a much better job [at measuring the students’ personalities]¨ (p.36) than the close friends. This experiment supports Gladwellś idea that it does not take much for people to understand us. It also suggests that first impressions are effective and that the snap-judgements you make are more than likely accurate. Gladwell also discusses snap decisions and how people are more likely to make decisions with less options available. Gladwell describes how Sheena Iyengar

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It takes many other, intrinsic forms (that often happen by chance) for that individual to grasp the top of his field. Gladwell utilize a mix of research and anecdotes in order to precisely bring his point to his readers. His simple and straightforward style of writing propose that he and the reader are good buddies, tempting to pathos to help the reader relate to Gladwell and see his point of view. (Hauk, 2009) This mellow style of writing also appeals to a regular reader: it not only cause the book clear to discern, dissimilar to scholarly nonfiction books on the market, but also makes the reader more interested in the topic because he doesn’t have to toil through the entire academic vocabulary found in other nonfiction works.

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Knowledge is power in the world and in the world of Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury emphasises this theme, and in the interview he his theme is that the more you know the more powerful you will be. In the interview with Ray Bradbury he says “Teachers inspire, libraries teach. This shows he believes that a book can teach you, but only a person can make you want to learn. In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Beatty has a dream and in this dream Montag says “ Knowledge is power.

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It becomes apparent that the standard for humane actions can be easily skewed with a majority of a social group being instilled with fear. Inhumane actions can easily seem humane if everyone believes it. In any case, murder is not accepted by the laws of society and is a cruel act of hate. In Malcom Gladwell’s work, he discusses the murderer Bernie Goetz, and how he was able to get away with murder, with his name in good standing, because he murdered what many people feared. Gladwell describes the way the people in the city perceive Goetz’ actions when he says “They seemed the embodiment of the kind of young thug feared by nearly all urban-dwellers, and the mysterious gunman who shot them down seemed like an avenging angle” (150).

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In section three of the introduction to Blink, titled “A Different and Better World”, Gladwell delves into the importance of what his theory suggests. It is reiterated that people should begin to pay more attention to their instincts, and stress less about drawn out decisions. Gladwell even believes that “if we stopped scanning the horizon with our binoculars and began instead examining our own decision making and behavior through the most powerful of microscopes” that it would drastically change the way society functions. Something to note here is that this idea was not stated ordinarily or in a boring fashion; instead, Gladwell decides it would be more effective to personify the subject. Personification often adds new meaning to the overall message of a piece, particularly when done in such a way that it is profound and resonates throughout the audience.

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He sees how they beat people down and how ruthless they can be with him and his newfound friends. In her writing, Carol Plum-Ucci poses the question, “How does judgement of others affect how a person

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In every Disney movie the villain is generally portrayed as evil or crazy, and it is taken as a personality type, but Disney movies also tend to sneak in a backstory for the villain geared towards explaining how they had come to be evil. And in the end, the villain is usually convinced that they should be “good” (again). So from this perspective, it may appear more so that the villain is not a personality type but a product of the situations they were in each moment that lead to he or she becoming the villain. Malcolm Gladwell is an award winning author who constructed a theory labeled The Power of Context, a chapter in his book The Tipping Point, to prove that people, such as villains in Disney movies, are products of their situations. In essence, to be a product of situations is to be a product of context.

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In “Small Change: Revolution Not be Tweeted” by Malcolm Gladwell , Gladwell explains his own thoughts on why even in the age of technology social media will never be the strongest way to display activism. Throughout the article the author highlights what he feels makes activism work and what he feels may not work. He thoroughly explains his reasoning for his opinions by using rhetorical strategies. For example, he notes that for a cause to be effective the people pursuing it must have a strong tie or a strong connection to it. This can tie/connection can come from experiencing the problem first hand or having multiple friends or family already involved in the cause.

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This conversation alone, begins the method of straw man. Malcolm Gladwell uses this same method once again in

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As children grow up, most of them are taught not to judge a book by its cover, but in “Blink” by Malcom Gladwell, Gladwell challenges this statement with the thought that our judgments come from our unconscious that may make better judgement calls in a particular situation better than we could by consciously making the decision. Gladwell bring’s up the term thin-slicing. Thin-slicing is a term used in psychology and philosophy to describe the ability to find patterns in events based on very narrow windows of experience. He explains that our brains use thin-slicing unconsciously to “think without thinking.” Various studies that were discussed in the book-such as the fake Kouros and priming-have been shown to prove that when correctly trained,

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Writers do their job because they want to express their ideas to make an impact on the readers. Sometimes they want to convince their audience through persuasion. They can do it using different rhetorical elements such as logos, ethos, and pathos. These are Greek words that mean logic, character, and emotion consecutively.

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Malcolm Gladwell was a famous writer for the The New Yorker who branched into psychology with his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking which was mostly psychological work. Gladwell had a talent for weaving together scientific research from many diverse fields of study. Gladwell’s book Blink was an attempt to bring a new focus of psychology called rapid cognition to the public eye. Gladwell noted that the ability to make lightning-quick decisions evolved for the sake of survival and that we basically run on two brains: one that had to deliberate over things, and one that acts then and asks questions later. Studies have shown that snap judgements made about someone are just as accurate as if we had observed them for a long period

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Rhetorical questions In his expository text, “Blink”, Malcom Gladwell uses rhetorical questions to get the reader interested in the content of the book. This trend begins in the introduction where Gladwell introduces the idea that the subconscious mind has extraordinary abilities that people do not know about. After the Getty museum was asked to buy a Greek Kouro statue that was in almost perfect condition. The Getty performed an investigation to determine whether the Kouro was a forgery or not.

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Held captive. Forced to do the unimaginable. Threatened. Beaten. Power.

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In his article, “Thresholds of violence” by Malcolm Gladwell, has effectively proven that the school shootings changed and they’ve became ritualized. From an incident, a group of three officers had arrived to the unit’s door step, and a young man stood in the center. The man became extremely defensive when one of the officers had to pat LaDue down. The officer had over heard that LaDue was making bombs in the storage locker, then had found a SKS assault rifle with sixty rounds of ammunition, a Beretta 9-mm, hand gun, including three ready-made explosive devices hidden in his bedroom. “There are far more things out in that unit than meet the eye” (Gladwell 2), exampling how there’s not only going to be a specific amount of bombs that would have

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Blink written by Malcom is an argumentative based research book about how our adaptive subconscious plays a huge part in every day life. It also tells of the pros and cons of our adaptive subconscious. In Gladwell’s Blink he used different forms of rhetoric to persuade us, the readers, of his point successfully. Gladwell uses multiple counts ethos and logos in his writing to get his point across along with pathos, analogies, rhetorical questions, and irony. He also uses his tone and diction to assist his writing.

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