Haste Makes Waste

Stop and Think

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

Look Before You Leap

Why then, in Malcolm Gladwell’s

“blink” do we meet…

A psychologist who can predict within a few minutes whether a couple’s marriage will last more than

15 years…

A tennis coach who knows when a player

will double-fault before the racket

even makes contact with the ball…

Art historians who can recognize

whether million dollar pieces are a

fake with only a glance…

The Purpose of ‘blink’

1. Convince you that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately

2. Explain when you should trust your instincts and when to be wary of them

3. Prove snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled

• 1993 – An art dealer approaches the Getty

Museum with a rare sculpture valued at over $10 million dollars

• To determine its authenticity.– 14 months examination was issued.– Using electron microscopes,

microprobes, mass spectrometry, x-ray diffraction, and fluorescence

• Sculpture is purchased for $10 million

The Case of the Kouros

The Case of the Kouros

• Over the next several years• Experts receive feeling of

disappointment, shock, queasiness, and even nausea when they first view it

• No one has a scientific explanation

• Slowly the case for the authenticity of the kouros falls apart, until its eventually proven fake

Good to a Fault

• Live or taped, pro or amateur, male or female; Vic Braden could predict a double fault with amazing accuracy

• During testing he could predict 94% of the double faults in a live match

• Braden spent hours and days trying to figure out ‘how’ he knew, never finding an explanation

Why were a group of experts able to be more effective in 2

seconds of observation than 14 months of scientific

evaluation?

In the 2 seconds before a serve, how

could Braden predict a double fault with

such amazing accuracy?

Blink attempts to explain those 2

seconds…

Iowa Gambling Experiment

• A simple gambling game• Maximize the earnings

with certain cards.

• What players don’t know• Red deck is a mine-

field

• You win higher amount but you also loose higher

How long will it take the average person to figure out the game?

Iowa Gambling Experiment

On Average…

• 50 cards for us to realize there is a difference between the decks

• 80 cards for us to understand and explain the difference

How long will it take for the unconscious brain to figure out

the game?

Iowa Gambling Experiment• Iowa Scientists used a machine that measure the

activity of the sweat glands below the skin of the palm of your hands

• Gamblers started generating activity in response to the red decks after only 10 cards.

• More importantly, they began favoring the blue decks long before their conscious brain knew what was going on.

Jam Experts?

• Consumer Reports put together a panel of food experts and had them rank 44 exotic jams from best to worse

• Same jams were giving to two different sets of college students

– Group 1: Rank the jams based on first impression

– Group 2: Rank according to a complicated list of criteria and explain their decisions

Jam Experts?

• Group One: Correlation between college students and experts was .55 (considered a incredibly high rating)

• Group Two: Correlation between college students and experts was .11 (considered equivalent to chance)

Conscious vs. Unconscious

The Conscious Mind– Located on the left side of the brain– Calculated, Direct, Logical– Can only process 9 items at one time– Sleeps when we sleep– Represents 10% of our total brain

capacity

Conscious vs. Unconscious

The Unconscious Mind– Located on the right side of the

brain– Associated with our nervous system,

heart rate, homeostasis, memories, experience

– Stays awake when we sleep– Represents 90% of our total brain

capacity

Conscious vs. Unconscious

• The conscious brain cannot explain the unconscious brain

– Experts could not explain what “looked” wrong about the kouros

– Braden could not explain his double fault accuracy

– Gamblers couldn’t explain why they favored the blue deck after 10 cards

Explaining the Unconscious

• Explanations not only are inaccurate, but also hurt the unconscious brain’s ability

• When college students were asked to explain on why they liked each exotic jam, correlations dropped from .55 to .11

The “Dark Side” of ‘blink’

IAT (Implicit Association Test)

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.jsp

The “Dark Side” of ‘blink’

• Everyone has some type of preference for age, weight, skin tone, religion, race

• These preferences are made from our experiences, associations, education, etc.

• The conscious is much easier to fake then the unconscious

Adaptive Errors

Errors in preference have caused…

• The United States to elect President Warren Harding in 1921, because he ‘looked’ like a presidential candidate

• Fortune 500 companies to hire CEO’s, 33% of which were over 6’2” tall, while the only 3.9% of American adult males are over 6’2”.

(an inch of height is worth $769 a year)

Adaptive ErrorsA study of car salesmen in Chicago showed the following…

• Car Salesmen offered a group of identical buyers the following price:

• White men: $725 above invoice

• White women: $935 above invoice

• Black women: $1,195 above invoice

• Black men: $1,687 above invoice

How would our own unconscious

preferences affect a strategic management

decision?

How do we overcome these unconscious

preferences if we are unable to “look inside” the vault to see them?

Primed for Action

Assemble each of the following 5 word sets into a sentence using 4 words…

1. him was worries she always2. from are Florida oranges temperature3. shoes give replace old the4. be will sweat lonely they5. sky the seamless gray is6. should now withdraw forgetfully we7. us bingo sing play let8. sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins

Primed for Action

Assemble each of the following 5 word sets into a sentence using 4 words…

1. him was worried she always2. from are Florida oranges temperature3. shoes give replace old the4. be will sweat lonely they5. sky the seamless gray is6. should now withdraw forgetfully we7. us bingo sing play let8. sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins

Primed for Action• Study created by Psychologist John Bargh

• Same experiment done with two groups, using words such as “aggressive”, “rude”, “bold”, “bother”, and “intrude” vs. “respect”, “patiently”, “polite”, “courteous”

• Subjects were then asked to wait at a window for the results of the testing

• Can you guess what happened?

Primed for Action

• The people primed to be rude interrupted, on average, after only 5 minutes of waiting

• The people primed to be polite, NEVER interrupted

Primed for Action• IAT has been proven time and time

again to be unchangeable despite your conscious beliefs

• What if you were asked to look at pictures of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or Nelson Mandela before you took the Race Association test? Or read about successful female business women before the career/gender test?

Primed for Action• We can change our first impressions, or alter

the way we “thin-slice” by changing the experiences that shape those impressions

• This can be changed in the short term through “priming” or in the long term through cumulative experience

• Experience soaks into our unconscious and changes the way we view the world

So how do we change our strategic management decision preferences or

bias?

Trained to ‘blink’

• Think about the art experts and the tennis pro…what made their decisions so effective?

– One: They understood, accepted, and relied on

“thin-slicing”

– Two: They had no natural preference or bias that needed correction

– Three: Their decisions were made in areas of expertise and passion

Seven Seconds In the Bronx: The Delicate Art

of Mind Reading

Seven Seconds In the Bronx

• First Impression• When we first meet someone new and we have a

preconceived notion of what that person is like and what they are thinking.

• We use these cues when we meet people in order to read the person’s mind.

• Can be fatal if not used properly.• Example of 4 undercover police officers and

a common man.

Strategic Management Case Studies are the

“training” of our adaptive unconscious

to make sound decisions.

Steps to Improvement

• Step 1: Acknowledge that the adaptive unconscious exists and holds great power

• Step 2: Understand your natural preferences

• Step 3: Use priming to change those preferences or at least compensate for them

• Step 4: Increase experience, education, and practice to sharpen “thin-slicing”

• A decision made very quickly can be as accurate as decisions made cautiously and deliberately

• Snap judgments and first impressions can be controlled and educated.

• When the powers of rapid cognition go awry, they go awry for a very specific and consistent set of reasons, and those reasons can be identified and understood.

• The power of rapid cognition is an ability that everyone can develop.

• When a judgment is made out of context will usually result in an incorrect response.

The 10 Things Manager Need to Know from Blink

• Too much information can be overwhelming when making a decision and can cause the individual to over analyze a given situation.

• There are ways to change the way we as individuals think from the lessons taught in Blink

• If you continue to make bad snap judgments, then you have to modify by examining your implicit biases

• There are ways to appeal to and influence consumers through their unconscious mind.

• Thin-slicing will help improve your ability to read people on first impressions

The 10 Things Manager Need to Know from Blink

Thank You!!!

Discussion Questions1. Do you think you could hire someone by

‘thin-slicing’ the candidate during a brief interview? How effective would it be?

2. Would you introduce priming in the work environment to help improve customer service?