TOW #14 IRB Post

In the second half of Blink, Malcolm Gladwell continues to explore how the brain's unconscious thinking works, as well as the power and implications of this kind of thinking. Though the unconscious has the ability to pick up on details and rapidly make accurate assessments, there are times when it can be wrong. Gladwell explains how one can become "mind blind" when one's thinking narrows during high stress situations, or how judgement can be influenced by stereotypes and prejudices unconsciously. Again, Gladwell uses anecdotes from real events and evidence from studies to convincingly support his ideas. Each chapter in the book is organized around one main story that deals with an aspect or idea of unconscious thinking, and then throughout the chapter it is analyzed with support from other anecdotes, events, or research. For example, in the chapter "Seven Seconds in the Bronx", Gladwell tells the story of a police shooting in New York City in 1999, in which a young man was killed by the police because they thought he was acting suspiciously and they thought he had a gun. In the chapter, Gladwell goes into depth on the story, then cites cases of other police brutality stories and introduces the idea of mind-blindness. Ultimately, he analyzes the anecdote to show how our unconscious can drastically mislead us in fast moving situations of overwhelming stress, and how we need to understand this and be able to control it. In the conclusion of the book, Gladwell writes about a female trombonist who made it into the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in a blind audition, but was demoted and discriminated against when it was discovered that she was female. With this story he explores the issue of the lack of women in professional orchestras before the blind audition process was established. When the judges could see the performers, their opinions were unconsciously influenced by the gender of the performer, as well as their posture and demeanor, and their instrument, thus letting their personal prejudices affect their decisions. The important part of this story, Malcolm Gladwell emphasizes, is that the problem was fixed by the implementation of blind auditions. This story at the end of the book, ultimately reinforces Gladwell's purpose: to make the audience aware of how their unconscious thinking works so that they can understand it and train it to use it better. He gets his message across strongly and effectively because his evidence and research and his analysis of these shows the reader the ideas and how they are influential in real life.