Reviews, Reflections, Recollections

Just a blog filled with my usual irreverent observations about life and all that.

Name:
Location: Singapore, Singapore

enjoys reading and is perpetually trying to find space for all of the books he owns in his room. He also enjoys films, and in particular, going to the cinema. Although a self-confessed trivia buff, reports that he is an insufferable know-it-all are completely unfounded. He enjoys a nice glass of tipple now and then, be it a pint of beer, a glass of wine or a single malt whisky.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Quiet Day, A Review of Blink

Another quiet day today. Slept in a bit after talking to DT on MSN Messenger early this morning. She is off in Colorado attending a conference and having a short break at the same time. Woke up, and did some reading for revision while also listening to the Manchester Utd vs Birmingham City match on the internet Radio Five Live.

Walked over to Summertown where I decided to have dinner at Joe's restaurant. I had previously been to Joe's but the branch down Cowley Road with DT and her two friends who had so kindly donated many of their household stuff (lamps, futon etc.) to us before we left. Had a quiet pint at the Dew Drop Inn at Summertown while also watching the football highlights and finishing up a book I was reading called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (more on that later). Pottered home, surfed the net for a bit, read a bit and went to bed. I am becoming positively domestic. Perish the thought.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is a fascinating book, examing the myriad situations where subconcious thinking takes place. Apparently, our brains help us to make decisions instinctively at split second speed, below the level of concious thought. Gladwell examines this in lots of wonderfully enthralling ways, which is the key strength of this book, from art experts examining a Greek sculpture and knowing instinctively that something is wrong with it, thought they are not necessarily able to explain rationally exactly what is amiss, to an experiment with two sets of cards, whereby one pack was far more beneficial in helping the person win than another which showed that the body showed negative reactions to the red pack (increased sweat, avoidance of drawing red cards) after just 10 cards had been drawn, whereas the brain was only able to establish a concious pattern that the blue pack was better after about 60 draws.

Gladwell examines this notion of subconcious thinking and numerous fascinating psychological studies that have been done looking into this phenomenon. He looks at not just how it is beneficial, but also how it has a negative aspect. In the latter case, he looks at studies revealing our intrinsic mental associations with race and gender, and how this often has certain positive and negative connotations. Furthermore, he examines how in certain situations, having too much information can actually be highly detrimental to decision making, looking at examples ranging from US army simulations, medical diagnosis for heart disease to problem solving experiments.

What was even scarier in my view was his examination of how human beings can be "primed". Specifically, a psychologist gave several volunteers a simple word problem game. However, within that game, there were two several sets of words, seperated into two seperate groups. One group was given words associated with aggression and another group words associated with acceptance and mild politeness. The people undergoing the word problem game were then asked to approach a member of the research staff, who just happened to be chatting to another research assistant. The test was to see whether the priming for "aggresiveness" and the priming for "politeness" would have an effect on how long/in what manner they would interrupt the conversation. A cap of 10 minutes was placed on the experiment. As is to be expected, many of the volunteers primed with the aggresive tendency interrupted well before 10 minutes. What was more startling was that of the other group almost nobody interrupted the conversation before the time expired. In fact, not a single person did.

The above is just one example of the many fascinating studies that Gladwell uses as examples in his book. Other aspects of thought that he looks at is how our brains responds and focuses under severe stress, and indeed a fascinating chapter on our emotions, how they are expressed facially and indeed the very fact that facial expressions themselves have an effect on emotions and not just vice versa.

All I can say in sum is that Gladwell's book is fascinating, filled with insight, and most concisely written and powerfully written. I can only highly recommend it.

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