Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell • Canadian raised New Yorker journalist. • One of Time’s 100 most influential people for 2005 • Studies of social biology • Might be distantly related to Colin Powell. What do you think?

Chapter 1: Thin Slicing

What’s this all about? • Rapid Cognition. The thoughts you process in the blink of an eye. • You meet someone and make conclusions in two seconds. • Call it intuition? • When is it better to take time • It’s an intellectual adventure.

Where’d this idea come from? • Look at his hair. • Used to be short. • Grew it out on a whim • Changed his life • Tickets • Attention from airport security • Mistaken for a rapist by cops once. • The rapist was bigger, way younger, and didn’t look like him, but it’s the hair.

Imagine there’s a game. • 4 decks of cards, 2 blue, 2 red. • You draw cards at your choice. 1 at a time. • Some cards win you money, some take it away. • You’re trying to win the most money.

Secrets to the game, • Red decks are a mix of a few big winnings, but even more losings. • The only way to come out ahead is to keep taking from the blue decks, they have a steady moderate pay outs, with fewer, smaller penalties.

So what? • U. of Iowa scientists did this. • After ~ 50 cards people get the secret. They don’t know why, but they know the blue decks are better. • That makes sense

What’s cool? • They hooked the players up to machines to monitor sweat on palms. • We sweat when nervous. • Players sweated (showed stress) at 10 cards in. • This is when behavior started changing too. • They had figured out the game, 40 cards before they knew they had figured out the game.

It’s spidey sense. The mind operates most efficiently by relegating a good deal of high-level, sophisticated thinking to the unconscious, like a jet on automatic pilot. It sizes up the world, warns of danger, sets goals, and starts action for us. -Tim Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves

How long does it take you to decide if you like a teacher? • A study: Show students ten sec. clips of a teacher, they’ve never met, with no sound, and they can say how effective the teacher is • Cut it back to 5 seconds, then 2 seconds and you get similar results • What happens in those 2 seconds? Archie’s teachers.

Have you ever had the feeling that a couple’s future is successful or doomed by watching a brief exchange between them? What are you picking up on? • If there is a psychologist who is 95% accurate in predicting whether a couple will stay married or get divorced would you take your newlywed wife to see him?

John Gottman: Conscientious objector to Vietnam, still strikes you as a bit of a hippie. • Takes short (15 min) clips of couples talking. • Hooked up to electrodes, sensors, pressure meters under their seats. • Dissects the clips second by second, categorizing emotions, by what they say and do. • 95% accurate at predicting the relationship’s outcome.

This isn’t “thin slicing, it’s the opposite, but it shows that we reveal things about ourselves nonverbally that we don’t intend to. And some people are great at capitalizing on that for the big win.

What about divorce, ect? • Guys get defensive, they use “yes-but” appear to agree to avoid conflict when there really is a conflict. • People ask for validation or credit, partners don’t give it. Can’t say, “you’re right” • Four horsemen of bad relationship: defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, and number 1 relationship killer, contempt • Contempt also correlates with sickness

A ratio of about 5 positive things signals sent to 1 negative signal sent is the limit to successful relationships. • Ask a couple about how they got together, see if there’s a pattern there about what you know about their relationship as a whole.

Microexpressions • Brief facial expressions that last less than a quarter of a second. • Reveal things about us we don’t want, reveal things that aren’t even delibrate. • The best actors sort of can do these. • Cops read these in your face. • Connect to The Human Face, A BBC show, ~ 11 min. into it. • There are around 7K expressions

Face anatomy • ~ 44 muscles, 1 joint, couple of fused bones, but muscle aren’t tendoned to the bones, giving huge mobility. • Many people can’t read expressions well. • Makes arguments interesting. • People with Apsbergers, don’t have the same activity in their Amygdala as the rest of us when analyzing expressions. But they can learn it. • Mobius syndrom, paralyzed facial nerves, no expressions.

Study: 2 groups of students. One watches gross surgeries, another watches nature videos. Both groups are try to convince their partners that they’re watching nature videos • How good are partners at telling liars? • Avg. Person: 50% chance. • Psychologists, lawyers, cops, professionals who are supposed to catch liars, also 50%. • Secret service agents got 80%, they are trained to recognize microexpressions.

Smiles and manipulation • The fake smile is easy because it only uses 2 muscles. • Study: Intensity of smiles in a college yearbook was a predictor of overall quality of life 40 years later. • Smiles can increase sales 30-40%

Try it. • Can you control your microexpressions? Furrows in the brow, distress. • Can you lie about something you feel strongly about? • “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

In Kendo priority is given to control of facial expression and analysis of the opponent. • Watching the pitcher, the quarterback. You read faces. • This applies to your everyday life. • LOOK PEOPLE IN THE EYE, AND HOLD IT FOR A MOMENT. Not in a creepy way. Follow up and say ‘hello’. It sends a message of confidence.

What kinds of things don’t lend themselves to this “thin-slicing”?

Can you change your natural and/or unconscious patterns of behavior? • If you are aware of what you do that hurts your relationships, can you, could you, would you change your behavior?

Think about your room right now. What does it say about you? What does your bookshelf say about you? Your iPod? Your car’s interior? • What kinds of things about your personality are revealed? • What is not revealed?

Room study • Measuring people on 5 variables • Sociable/retiring, funloving/reserved • Trusting/suspicious, helpful/or not. • Organized/dis, Disciplined/weak willed • Emotional stability • Open to new experience

Two groups analyze a person on those 5, • 1 group knows the person well. • 2nd group doesn’t know the person but spends a ½ hour in their room • 2nd group is more accurate on 3 out of 5, organization, openess to new experience, and emotional stability.

What kinds of physical, inexplicable cues have you or others you know of experienced that lead to good decision making?

What’s the dif between doctors who get sued for malpractice and doctors who don’t? • If you had to choose between looking at resumes, creditials, or watching snippets of conversations between docs and patients. • Malpractice docs don’t make more medical mistakes, but they’re blamed for them more. • They spend about 3 minutes less with patients. • Don’t orient patients to what’s going on, or put them at ease.

Study: People can tell the dif between sued and not sued doctors by listening to a sound filtered recording of their voices that takes out words and only leaves a garble of pitch, intonation, and rhythm. • Dane Cook, on “God bless you.”

Why is there “road rage” but no “pavement rage” for pedestrians? • Two pedestrians bump. They can quickly use expressions to resolve it. • Emails can be waaaay. Misinterpreted. • So we use smilies.

KISMET Robot • Can you build a socially intelligent machine? • What signals does it have to percieve?

Malcolm Gladwell