Can you mind-read?

"We can all mind-read effortlessly and automatically because the clues we need to make sense of someone or some social situation are right there on the faces of those in front of us." (213)

This is how we thin-slice other people, we mind-read.

When we express emotions on our faces it is an automatic action and they can be voluntary or involuntary. We as people always judge what a person is thinking or how they are feeling. In the blink of an eye these impressions simply come to us, because a face can be a rich map and source of emotion.

I have never connected autism with mind-reading but Gladwell has linked the two with such strength and understanding that I now view autism and mind-reading on a whole new level.

"Their first-impression apparatus is fundamentally disabled, and the way that people with autism see the world gives us a very good sense of what happens when our mind-reading faculties fail." (214)

People with this condition focus on what people say and their words, not a person's facial expressions and "nonverbal cues." Gladwell makes this point very clear when he says that when speaking with someone who is autistic you could pick your nose or pull down your pants and they would not notice.

Those with autism are mind-blind. When you lack this ability you cannot look at someones face and automatically mind-read. Faces are simply objects, and the emotion in them is lost.

An experiment which I read about that was fascinating consisted of watching a movie through the eyes of an autistic person and contrasting this to people without autism. Each group wore hats that tracked their eye movements. One example of where the eye movements were distinctly different was in a scene in the movie where a man says "Who did that painting" and then points to the wall. Someone with autism does not look to where the speaker is pointing or follow this path with their eyes because they are not able to interpret this action; they cannot mind-read. When hearing this line they will look for a wall and search for a painting. Say there are several paintings, they wouldn't know the specific piece.

People with autism are unable to mind-read, something that comes to most people as an automatic response done outside of their awareness.

Blink!

The Dark Side

Our adaptive unconscious makes snap judgements and decisions. This is called thin-slicing, "the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviour based on very narrow slices of experience." (23) Thin-slicing is what makes it possible to analyze only 15 minutes of a wife and husband talking and be able to determine with 90% accuracy if that couple will still be married in 15 years. We can determine which doctors will be sued for medical malpractice just based on listening to brief clips of how a doctor talks to his patients instead of studying the physicians past history.

Our unconscious is "sifting through the situation front of us, throwing out all that is irrelevant while we zero in on what really matters, and the truth is that our unconscious is really good at this, to the point where thin-slicing often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and exhaustive ways." (33)

What if in that blink of an eye we become blind?

In the history of American presidents, historians agree that Warren Harding was one of the worst. How is it possible that a man who is hesitant and uncertain of policies and unable to formulate a speech be elected as president. The answer is quite simple, Warren Harding looked the part. When thin-sliced by people he appeared to be a man who would make a great president. Although thin-slicing allows us to "very quickly get below the surface of a situation" (75) sometimes rapid cognition can lead us in the wrong direction. This is what Gladwell calls the Warren Harding error; the dark side to our adaptive unconscious.

The IAT (Implicit Association Test) shows the effects of our feelings and actions when in moments that require spontaneous thinking. Our attitudes towards areas such as race and gender are not only conscious but also have an unconscious aspect where "the immediate, automatic associations...tumble out before we've even had time to think." (85) This is why over 80% of people who take the race IAT have pro-white associations. We are unaware of these associations because they occur behind a locked door on an unconscious level yet they have the power to govern our beliefs and our behaviour. This part of our unconscious are opinions shaped from our experiences.

In that blink of an eye we are blind.

This happens outside of our awareness behind a locked door but it is still something that we can work to control Gladwell argues. It all comes down to our experiences.

Bob Golomb is an extremely successful cars salesman because he is able to control the way in which he thin-slices. He avoids the Warren Harding error by permitting himself from judging his customers based on their appearance or first impressions and instead thin-slices a persons intentions, needs and emotions. He balances his "deliberate and distinctive thinking" (141) and thats what makes his decisions and ultimate prosperity successful.

The power of thin-slicing is incredible but it is something that under certain conditions we must have control of. Malcolm Gladwell is a brilliant man.

To think or to blink?

"There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis."

How is it that after months of scientific analysis and investigation of a marble statue it is deemed to be real and bought for $10 million, but when the statue is presented to a group of art experts, in almost an instant they felt an "intuitive repulsion" and knew that the statue was a fake?

Malcolm Gladwell introduces his book Blink by questioning our instincts and proving that although we live in a world where we believe that decision making requires time and effort, decisions that we make very quickly, almost instantly, can be just as good.

When we make decisions we go about this in the same style that we use to learn. We experience things which we think through and develop a theory about, and then we come to a conclusion. Gladwell refers to this as our conscious strategy which despite being "logical and definitive" is also slow. In contrast to this we also have an adaptive unconscious. This part of our brain makes decisions quickly, almost immediately, and based on a small amount of information. It acts under our conscious level where our brain can reach a conclusion without us actually knowing it has done so. Gladwell demonstrates and proves this with the story about the marble statue.

We really on have trust in our decision making at a conscious level. "Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don't judge a book by its cover." These have all been installed in us from an early age, as this way of thinking is thought to be a superior and smarter way to the art of decision making. Gladwell argues that we must learn that there are times instead where we must trust the power of our adaptive unconscious and make decisions in the blink of an eye. This is not always the case as there can be times where it can be "thrown off," distracted, and disabled," but it is something that we can develop and foster for ourselves.

Gladwell does an excellent job introducing his book telling stories followed by straight forward yet interesting and thought provoking explanations about the power of a blink; the first two seconds which made more sense of an important art statue than months of rational analysis.

The Language of Expression

"No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature." pg 19

Frye who suggests there are 3 main attitudes of our minds says that the language of literature belongs to our imaginative attitude, "a vision or model of the world as you could imagine it and would like it to be" pg 17. Literature uses association to connect humans to the outer world. It uses human shape and meaning. Literature does not only come in the form of great novels or pieces of writing. Where imagination is involved and where human connections are made literature can be present. Frye calls this primitive literature which isn't in itself distinguished specificaly as literature. Religion, magic, and social ceremonies are all examples givin but only a few of a list of many possibilities. The human mind is what forms and shapes literature. This can be linked back to my first post in the sense that literature is a result of the homes we build and our worlds that result. Not only does it produce results but it also is used in the opposite sense to shape and build these worlds. With this Frye in a way contradicts himself in this chapter because he before stated that "literature doesn't evolve or improve or progress" pg 9. Clearly however there has been evolution and progression from the more primitive times thoughout history. Although, it would be unfair to say that literature has improved because what makes one form of literature better than the other. There really is no way to measure the quality of a form or piece of literature, there is no grading scale. Literature is what we construct and allows us to build; the extent of form that can be associated with literature is only an extent of "human meaning [and] human shape" pg 3.

Literature is the expression of the imaginative language.

State of Being

“You're not separating only yourself from nature now, but constructing a human world and separating it from the rest of the world” (p.5)

The objective world Frye talks about is something that we are unable to relate or connect to because it lacks "human shape or a human meaning" pg3. Everyone is their own being and our beings result from the ways in which we construct them. We as beings grow homes which become our own worlds. Human interaction is what allows us to make our homes, our ideal states of being; we as humans need this. The objective world is not enough so we change it and build and build and we never stop building. Frye compares this to moving to a different level of human life.

This quote also depicts the isolation we experience because of our single identites as humans. This sort of isolation should have a positive meaning because it is what we grow on. Growth comes from human shape and human meaning, which is ultimately interaction. From this it is our home that grows which will in turn impacts other beings. We all start at the state of being and take different paths of growth from there.

We are separated because we have built our own worlds and we are what we build.