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As always Gladwell's books give you life from a different point of view. Scratch the surface and all is not what it seems to the casual eye. I love the way he introduces curious characters and tells the story that they became involved in. He writes beautifully and of things that will make you wonder why you have never heard of them before.
The basic premise is that decisions made very quickly (in the blink of an eye) can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately. But not always.
We have an onboard computer, a second nature, a subconscious instinct. When our power 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. It is possible to learn when to listen to that powerful onboard computer and when to be wary of it.
"Thin-slicing" refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviour based on very narrow slices of experience.
A study on marriage : The couples who end up in divorce are those who don't validate (recognize what the other person is speaking about and then be flexible about solutions). The inflexible ones are the ones who end up getting divorced.
In order for a marriage to survive , the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a given encounter has to be at least five to one.
THE FOUR OBSERVATIONS OF A MARRIAGE THAT SHOW IT'S GOING TO FAIL:
(1) Defensiveness.
(2) Stonewalling.
(3) Criticism.
(4) Contempt (the worst) - any statement made from a higher level such as an insult. Putting someone down. Having someone you love express contempt towards you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system. Contempt is closely related to disgust, and what disgust and contempt about is completely rejecting and excluding someone from the community.
THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS THAT YOU NEED:
(1) Extraversion. You should be sociable, not retiring. You should be fun-loving, not reserved.
(2) Agreeableness. You should be trusting, not suspicious. You should be helpful, not uncooperative.
(3) Dutifulness. You should be organized, not messy. You should be self-disciplined, not weak willed.
(4) Emotionally Stable. You should be calm, not worried. You should be secure, not anxious.
(5) Open to New Things. You should be creative, not boring. You should be independent, not conforming.
The simplest way that respect is communicated is through tone of voice.
Free will is largely an illusion : much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot.
Addicts can articulate very well the consequences of their behaviour. But they fail to act accordingly. That's because of brain damage to a small but critical part called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
I do not think I have this, because I do not lack compassion.
Human beings are a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things that we don't really have an explanation for. This is what we call a storytelling problem.
WE NEED TO ACCEPT OUR IGNORANCE AND SAY "I DON'T KNOW" MORE OFTEN!
Are you Racist? Try a computerized IAT (Implicit Association Test), the most famous one of all the Race IAT. The results may make you feel slightly creepy. Indeed!
Not long ago, data from four large studies that followed thousands of people from birth to adulthood calculated that , when corrected for such variables as age and gender and weight, an INCH OF HEIGHT is worth $789 a year in salary.
If you take this over the course of a 30-year career and compound it, we're talking about a tall person enjoying literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of earnings advantage.
Emotions are not just reflected on the face. Emotions can also start on the face. For example, you can fake a smile and actually feel better because of it.
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