Transcript BlinkChapter2

Blink Chapters 2 & 3
The Locked Door: The secret life
of snap decision
&
The Warren Harding Error: Why
Tall, Dark, and Handsome men
(like Mr. Chessman) rule.
• Vic Braden is in his 70’s.
– World Class tennis player when young
– Been a part of the sport for more than 50
years
– Can predict the rare professional double fault
– Doesn’t know how he does it just does it
• George Soros
– Billionare Investor
– Son says his back would start killing him and
he’d change his investing strategy
• In Spain they introduced classical music
into the subways then vandalism and
littering decreased
• What other areas of priming can you think
of?
Priming Experiments
• John Bargh developed lots of these
• Think of them as subliminal messages that
elicit changes in behavior.
• Study: people asked to put together
sentances from lists of words would have
their behavior unconsciously changed by
“seeding” the lists with words
– Lists with words like, worried, Florida, old,
lonely, gray, bingo, wrinkled. Made people
walk away from the test slowly, like an old
person.
• People with aggressive, bold, rude, bother,
disturb, intrude, infringe in their lists are
more likely to interrupt a post test
conversation.
• People with appreciate, patient, yeild,
polite, courteous did not interupt at all.
They’d sit there for minutes.
• And these were New Yorkers. People
noted for impatience.
Priming is not Brainwashing
• Can’t make someone rob a bank
• Study…
– Group 1: write an essay “What if I was a
professor?”
– Group 2: write an essay “What if I was a
soccer holigan?”
– Group 1: 55% on a trivia test afterwards
– Group 2: 42% on a trivia test afterwards
• Study…
– 2 groups of black college students to take 20
question test.
– 1 group has to fill out a form identifying
themselves as black students first
– That group had the number right cut in half
• And we can’t identify what primed us.
• Students couldn’t I.D. what the affected
them in post test interviews
• Should priming be used in schools? In
service industries?
• When does priming become manipulation?
• When does it become subliminal?
Speed Dating
• Strange things happen
• Characteristics that people report they are
attracted to on forms are not actually who
they end up being attracted to during the
speed dating.
• Report before speed dating, report a week
after speed dating, dif.
– But then after a month report goes back to
original.
• If what we say we want and what we really
want are dif, then what does that say for
on-line dating?
• Which is better a date set up by your
friends or a hit received through an online
social network?
• Is there even a point in asking someone,
“What is your type?”
Things happen that we don’t know
about
• Tennis and baseball players say they can
look a ball onto a padle/bat.
• They can’t the last five feet of movement is
measured in milliseconds, human eyes
can’t track that.
• The best in many sports can’t explain how
they play the way they do.
• An O.J. Simpson juror said, “Race had
absolutely nothing to do with my decision.”
• But how could she know?
• Your unconscious mind is scanning,
thinking, and processing, and it has
influence.
• At least these experiments give evidence
that it does. We can’t know directly
because its our unconscious.
The walk-away
• Sometimes we ccan’t explain our behavior
or thinking.
• You can’t think your way into the person
you’re going to fall in love with
• It’s better to have an expert show you how
to hit at Tennis/Baseball instead of telling
you.
Chapter 3
• Google: Programming Language inventor
or… Serial Killer and see if you can tell the
dif. between computer geeks and horribly
broken human beings.
• Or which of these two men was a
president?
• On the left is Harry Daugherty, the
essential political behind the scenes man.
• He was a major player in putting the man
on the right, Warren G. Harding into office
because “He looked like a president.”
What’s that got to do with me?
• Harding was picked to be the Rep.
Nominee because they were deadlocked
between two other guys at the national
convention. They could all agree on him.
• That’s the same way Luke Ravenstahl
became the head of Pittsburgh’s city
council, which led to him being the mayor.
So what?
• Harding was pres. For 2 years before
dying of a stroke.
• Also one of the worst presidents.
Dark side of snap decisions
• Racism, shallowness, prejudice
Implicit Association Tests (IAT)
• Assign each name below to the category
to which it belongs by putting a check
mark, or tap your finger there. Go as
quickly as possible and don’t skip any,
don’t worry about mistakes
• The tests show closer associations
because we give faster responses
Male
Female
__________John __________
__________Bob __________
__________Amy __________
__________Holly __________
__________Joan __________
__________Derek __________
__________Peggy __________
__________Jason __________
__________Lisa __________
__________Matt __________
__________Sarah __________
• That should have been easy. Now a
second with two categories at the top of
each column
Male or Career
Female or Family
______________Lisa _____________
______________Matt _____________
_____________Laundry ___________
___________Entrepreneur _________
_____________John______________
____________Merchant____________
______________Bob______________
____________Capitalist____________
____________Holly_______________
______________Joan_____________
_____________Home_____________
____________Corporation_________
___________Siblings_____________
____________Peggy______________
_____________Jason_____________
_____________Kitchen____________
• Little harder? But still pretty fast?
• One more time
Male or Family
Female or Career
Babies
Sarah
Derek
Merchant
Employment
John
Bob
Holly
Domestic
Entrepeneur
Office
Joan
Peggy
Cousins
Grandparents
Jason
Home
Lisa
Corporation
Matt
• Last version takes longer because Male/Family
and Female/Career are cross paired in most
minds.
• IAT’s hit you over the head with conclusions.
• Go to
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectat
est.html
• take the race test. Feel crappy about yourself.
• Unconscious attitudes differ from
conscious attitudes.
• Part of it may be North American media
and culture
• For the record: Malcolm Gladwell is half
black and he showed a “moderate
automatic preference for whites”
– Out of slight, moderate, and strong
• Do we act dif. In mixed company?
• Race, gender, age, sexual orientation,
weight, height?