Warming Up - Exercise 10

Blink! 

How long does it take to blink?  A second?  Half a second?  How much can you learn about someone in the blink of an eye?  These questions lead to some interesting concepts in Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller, Blink:  The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

In his book, Gladwell presents a number of examples that initially seem counterintuitive, especially to Baby Boomers and bureaucrats.  We usually accept as a given that more data will make both the task of decision making easier and the results of the decision better.  Instead, Gladwell proposes that in many situations, when the decision maker is an expert, less is really better.

One example that I found compelling concerns determining the likelihood that a physician may be sued for malpractice.  Gladwell proposes two scenarios and asks which would provide the average person with the information needed to determine which doctor has been, or will be, sued.  In option one, the assessor would have information about the doctor’s training and credentials and records showing how many errors the doctor has made over the past years.  In option two, the assessor would be able to listen in on very brief snippets of conversation between each doctor and his or her patients.  Gladwell’s surprising assertion is that option two provides more relevant information.  You see, people don’t sue doctors just because they’ve been harmed by shoddy medical care.  People sue doctors because they’ve been harmed by shoddy medical care and something else happens to them.  People sue doctors when things go wrong – but they sue the doctor they believe didn’t care.  This is why there is more relevant information available in overheard conversations between doctors and their patients if the question to be answered is “Which doctor is more likely to be sued for malpractice.”

In fact, psychologist Nalini Ambady refined the experiment that proved Gladwell’s contention by taking ten second segments of these recorded conversations and “content-filtered” the slices so that there were no recognizable words left.  The only thing left was the intonation, rhythm, and pitch.  And using only that much information, she was able to predict which doctors got sued and which didn’t.

A “blink’s” worth of information, when presented to an expert, is enough to predict certain behaviors.  Gladwell provides many more such examples to support his theory that we can accurately process information even when it doesn’t seem as though we have had enough time to process any information.  Yet, we continue to look for more and more data on which to base decisions.  And we continue to propose more study, more research, and pilots from which we can gather even more data before we commit to making changes.

But Gladwell also points out the dangers of acting too quickly on the basis of first impressions.  He identifies the all-too-common mistake of making decisions on the basis of appearances as the “Warren Harding Error,” after the 29^th President of the United States who served for just over two years.  Historians have often identified President Harding as one of the worst in U.S. history.  Warren Harding became president in 1921 at least in some part because to many people, he looked like a President.  

To explain the extent of the challenge we face overcoming the “Warren Harding Error,” Gladwell describes the Implicit Association Test or IAT.  The premise of the IAT is that we make connections more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds than we do between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar.  The website, Understanding Prejudice, explains that the IAT reveals unconscious biases regarding people of different races, genders, religions, or other characteristics.  And the unconscious bias that the IAT has been uncovering for the longest period of time is based on race.  To test out Gladwell’s theories, I completed the IAT for myself.  After all, Gladwell himself – the mixed race child of a white father and Jamaican mother – reported that his IAT results consistently rated him as having a “moderate automatic preference for whites.”

I tried my hand at two of the IATs available on the Project Implicit site.  And I can report that my results are consistent with Gladwell’s contentions.  This statement will be more meaningful later, so let me repeat it.  My results are consistent with Gladwell’s contentions.

You see, Gladwell contends that the “automatic preference” is unlikely to change over time.  I have taken two different IATs consistently over the past several days.  And the results of my taking the Race (i.e., Black-White) IAT, have been consistent – and consistently other than what I want the results to be.  The results over the past three weeks reveal that I have a “moderate” to “strong” automatic preference for whites.  This is not a result I want.  But since the IAT reveals “unconscious” associations, I shouldn’t be surprised by the consistency.  No one has to choose positive associations with the dominant group.  The fact that the associations are revealed should not, therefore, be surprising.

But on the other IAT – the Arab-Muslim IAT – my results have been quite the opposite:  The results on that IAT show “little to no automatic preference between Arab Muslims and Other People.”  In fact, once the result even showed “a slight automatic preference for Arab Muslims compared to Other People.”

How can I claim that my results – which appear contradictory themselves – are consistent with Gladwell’s contentions, especially since he proposes two apparently contradictory notions?  His first contention is that we don’t need to spend so much time gathering and analyzing data to make accurate decisions.  His second contention is that we need to avoid making decisions on the basis of only first impressions.  

But Gladwell also provides some interesting – and optimistic – ideas for how to take advantage of his arguments behind each of these two ideas.  You see, he learned that there is one way to change the IAT results.  And that one way probably explains why the results of my Arab-Muslim IAT show such a positive stance.

Gladwell reports that a student of one of Project Implicit’s three Principle Investigators has taken the Race IAT every day.  And every day the results were the same, until one day when his results reported a positive association with blacks.  This result was so puzzling that the student spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was different that morning.  Finally, he realized that he had spent the morning watching the Olympics, and in the space of those several hours, he saw some of the most powerful black athletes in the world.  His mind was full of positive associations with powerful black athletes, which translated into more positive unconscious associations with blacks generally.

The way to change the IAT results is to become accustomed to people in the other category.  Even more than that, to become involved with people in the other category in a manner that increases the positive thoughts you have about the other category.

And this is why I believe my results when taking the Arab-Muslim IAT are so different from the results of my taking the Race IAT – I spent the majority of my career with the Department of State in the Arab world where I have met some of the most passionate and compassionate people in the world.  But my attitude wasn’t always so positive.  I am ashamed to admit that I recall the days when my automatic response in a word association exercise to “Palestinian” would have been “terrorist.”  The connections between “Arab” or “Muslim” or “Palestinian” and negative images were in the newspapers, on TV, in the movies every single day.

Our first impressions are the result of two things:  our experiences and our environment.  By changing the environment, thereby changing our experiences, we can change our unconscious impressions.  Dr. Norman Vincent Peale said it in other words way back in 1952 in the title of his most widely read book, The Power of Positive Thinking.  

This is why I think the message of Blink! is so important.  By getting involved with the diversity around us, we can change our implicit associations.  We can change our unconscious first impressions.  We can do it.  And we must.