Reflection Two of Blink:
Chapter 2/Chapter 3
In these chapters, Gladwell describes unconsciousness as this locked door that the general public cannot enter to understand its secrets. He intrigued me with this analogy because I would love to open that door and see its secrets. The unconscious mind can alter your behavior based on your observations. This claim made me feel very vulnerable as I felt that I am always conscious of my behavior. To demonstrate this, he gave us a game to play in the book. We had to unscramble 10 sets of 5 words into 4-word sentences as fast as possible, but some of the words described the characteristic of being a senior citizen, such as “old”, “bingo”, and “wrinkle”. Although we are not aware of these words because our attention is focused on the game, our unconscious mind picks up on these words and tells the body to act accordingly. In this case, your movements, such as walking, would be slower because your unconscious mind picked up those words I mentioned earlier. It figured that we could be in an environment that is necessary to act slow. Surprisingly, they found that the subjects that were tested did walk slow! I found this astounding because I now feel that I am not truly conscious of my behaviors.
This made me think about the songs I listen too. I may like the beat of the song, but I may not pay attention to the lyrics. The lyrics could make me feel a certain way or change my attitude after it’s been observed through my unconscious mind. If I’m listening to a song with vulgar lyrics, I may have a mean or aggressive attitude soon after, and the opposite would occur with a sweet love song.
Because I found this experiment to be very interesting, I decided to try it on my dad. My dad doesn’t always take me seriously, so from the get-go this experiment was doomed. The experiment didn’t work of course because there were many flaws in the scientific method, such as the bias that would have occurred because it’s my dad and the limited materials and tools to measure the speed of his walk. Nonetheless, I enjoy this book a lot because it gives the reader a chance to try out the experiments and see if the conclusions they made are the same as what the author is reporting.
The author mentions a dark side in “thin-slicing”, which was previously discussed in the last reflection. This type of rapid cognition can sometimes have errors, one of which is called the Warren Harding Error. This error is the cause of our prejudice or discrimination. For example, people see the stature and physical features of a person and decide quickly if they are qualified for a job or if they can be easily manipulated to buy a car for a higher price. I feel that discrimination, as a result of stereotypes, occurs, in part, when people do not think deeply about whom they are discriminating. They see the shallow surface of a person and draw conclusions, despite its authenticity. They fall victim to the Warren Harding Error. I admit I have done the same. However, I feel that I must train myself to fight against it, and train my mind to correct such unconscious mistakes. It’s wrong to judge one particular individual based on a stereotype that can’t be true for them particularly.
These chapters have definitely helped me understand the mystery of our unconscious mind a little more. The unconscious mind can literally control your behavior without you being consciously aware! This is interesting to me. Also, even though the unconscious mind can arrive at accurate conclusions many times, it can also arrive at inaccurate conclusions. A question I have for the author is when is it the appropriate to use the unconscious mind in decision making? I hope he will discuss this more in the book.