Malcolm Gladwell's Approach on Snap Judgments

Name: Big Ideas (Video) on iTunes

Title: Malcolm Gladwell on his best-selling book Blink-2005

Host: University of Toronto

This was independently hosted by the University of Toronto in 2005. Malcolm Gladwell was delivering a speech to an audience at the university about The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

    This Podcast was based off of Malcolm Gladwell's best-seller, Blink. He talks about how people make snap judgments so naturally. During this podcast, he gives several examples of how people make snap judgments, including one about auditions back in the day when women were not given a fair chance. He explains this in four lessons. 

    In lesson one, he says that we make these complicated, problematic, and counter-intuitive snap judgments. He says that in an audition, the judge, which in his story was the maestro, made judgments automatically. Some will say that it takes them 10 seconds to make a judgments, others will say it takes them 5 seconds, and some will say that even before the person speaks, they will make a judgment solely on what that person looks like or what they are wearing. It is a first impression based thing, kind of like love at first sight. Making judgments are a central part of how we make sense of the world and how we think. We make them automatically. They are decisions "made like that". 

    In lesson two, he talks about how women's auditions may have not been fairly judged. The maestro's judgment was clouded by sexism. Our snap judgments are corrupted by forces outside of our awareness. We may not even know why we are making these judgments to begin with. They are coming from a force within us. The hard part is that we make them with certainty that they are truthful and correct. We are making these from prior knowledge and therefore making these accusations or judgments. 

    In lesson three, he tells us the story of the screen. In the audition, they did not want any bias. Someone may be the son or the nephew of the judge and they didn't want them to be chosen because they knew somebody. They only wanted the best of the best. They put a screen in front of the people auditioning so they could only use their auditory information. It is harder for a bias approach when you have that visual aspect taken away from you because that is usually the first thing that you use to judge somebody with. Appearance is important. Visual Information takes up 80-85% of our judgment. Snap judgments are less likely to happen when out information is simplified and clarified, when we only have certain things to focus on. This helps us to become better decision makers. The screen hid the musician playing that beautiful music. Moral of the story...that musician was a woman and she got the part, because she was the best. 

    In lesson four, Gladwell explains that changing the context in the situation can help to make a better decision. Without the screen, that woman may not have even gotten the chance to audition. They would have made a snap judgment because she was a woman and would not have even considered her. They can be horrible and lead to a jump in conclusions. When you are in a certain situation, you can make a snap judgment based on your current state of mind and it can be destructive. This mistake is commonly  made with cops. They see the perpetrator reach into their pocket and assume they are pulling out a gun, when they were really trying to pull out their ID or a phone...and they shoot an innocent person.

    It is all about making the right decision and not getting ahead of yourself. 

• This fits perfectly into its category. It is a typical podcast for its genre. Most or all are done by professors or professionals in their field. It has an obvious educational aspect to it because it is informative and done in the University of Toronto. 

• The quality was clear. Everything was easily understandable and easy to follow. It was engaging for the people in the audience. I could tell because they were laughing at his jokes and clearly paying close attention. It was engaging to me because Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite author. He kept them engaged with story telling. He wanted them to be a part of his speech by involving them. It sounded very professional, but at the same time, it had a relaxed element to it which was inviting for the audience. I did not notice any technical mistakes if there were any.