BLINK, Chapter 2 The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Decisions

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BLINK, Chapter 2The Locked Door The Secret
Life of Snap Decisions

• Synopsis presented by Chuck Selden
• for BCIG
• Thursday, March 23, 2006 from 530 to 730 p.m.

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The inaccessible source of our snap judgments

• You really dont know why you make some decisions
• Especially those that come to you suddenly
• Thus, these are snap decisions
• Some call it the gut instinct
• THIS CHAPTER PROVIDES
• SEVERAL EXAMPLES

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Vic Bradentennis pro and coach

• Knew when a player was about to double fault
• Was right about this rare event 100 of time
• Wondered how he knew (giss)
• Couldnt figure it out
• (ascribed it to his unconscious)
• Accepted it as instinct but called in this book
  Blink

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Unconscious snap judgments

• Rely on thin slices of experience
• Bubble up form sub conscious
• Enormously quick
• mental rush
• flurry of visual facts
• stomach felt it
• back suddenly ached

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Recognize Value of Snap Judgments

• Gamblers and red decks
• Art historians and the kouros
• Vic Braden and double faults
• George Soros and investments
• Jack Welch and management
• if we are to learn to improve the quality of the
  decisions we make, we need to accept the
  mysterious nature of our snap judgments. We need
  to respect the fact that it is possible to know
  without knowing why we know and accept that
  sometimes were better off that way

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Priming for Action

• Recent prior experience can temporarily affect
  decisions or behaviors without us realizing it
• Word lists with oldster cues
• Word lists with polite vs. impolite words
• Thinking about professors vs. hooligans
• Thinking about cooperativeness
• All resulted in statistically altered results on
  subsequent challenges

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Priming for Action

• Recent prior experience can temporarily affect
  decisions or behaviors without us realizing it
• Affects, then our exercise of free willour free
  will has been altered by the experimenter!
• Mediated through a subconscious working in secret

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The Secret Decision Maker

• Subconscious gathers in details of local
  environment---puts decisions into this context.
• Patients - injured ventromedial prefrontal
  cortex
• Could reason, make comparisons
• Could not make decisions
• Could not prioritize
• Lacked judgment
• Better off in critical situations just making the
  decision and surviving-rely on the subconscious
• go with your gut depends on the v-mPFC

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Storytelling Problem

• We want to make sense of the world
• Including that which depends on the subconscious
• We think we knowbut we dont!

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Example Storytelling Problem

• Speed-dating
• Dozen men, dozen women (in circle)
• 6 minutes conversation, then man rotates to next
  woman
• First Impression
• to rate or choose who to pursue
• they lost me at hello
• they know in the first minute
• BUT THEY DONT FOLLOW THE LIST OF ATTRIBUTES THEY
  SET OUT A PRIORI
• often chose not what they were looking for

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Example Storytelling Problem from Vic Braden
tennis pro and coach

• Spoke with Ted Williams (baseball star)
• Ted had said he could look the ball into the bat
• Vic had studied humans and ball speeds and knew
  this was impossible
• (three milliseconds over last few feet, too fast
  for eye and brain)
• Ted admitted that it seemed like he could

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Storytelling Problem

• What we know of our motivations and choices is
  incomplete
• The information is behind the locked door
• We as human beings have a storytelling problem.
  Were a bit too quick to come up with
  explanations for things we dont really have an
  explanation for.
• We need to accept our ignorance and say I dont
  know more often.
• But we dont like to feel ignorant!