...ISU Critical Essay – Short Essay Option Our second mind is not as simple as it seems. Blink is a behavioral economics book written in 2005 by British-Canadian Journalist Malcolm Gladwell, focusing on our ability to ‘’Thin Slice’’. He explains through this ability we are able to determine what is truly important from a narrow experience, suggesting our spontaneous decisions are often better than the ones we consider. Using several engaging examples, he warns however that this ability of ours is challenged by personal likes, dislikes and overload of information, and is in our best interest to train our first impression to understand this reality through experience. The lack of scientific research in Blink also suggests that it is anecdotal, but Gladwell accepts this reality himself and thoroughly explains every point he makes in regards to this single flaw. Drawing scenarios that practice this rapid cognition from science, advertising, medicine and many others, he is also able to directly engage the reader’s subconscious by random screening and thought provocation. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory brings awareness to the power of our unconscious decision-making and proposes various strategies that offer a solution to its fallacy, maintaining his veracity in the research presented despite the lack of scientific method. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory brings awareness to the power of our unconscious decision-making. Decisions made quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously...
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...wooden bed frame. About time I clean out this drawer! I thought to myself. Opening up the forbidden drawer locked inside the prison of my room, I peered into the crowded shelf that held my old and forgotten materials. Sifting through the junk, something shiny caught my eye. I reached for it and pulled it out, examining it’s glimmering circular shape. I flipped over, and saw 3 distinct icons: a red plane, a yellow pair of pants, and a green jacket. It was a CD. I couldn’t quite place where I had seen this from before; then a vague memory of seeing it being shoved into the car stereo trickled into the back of my mind. Eager to see what artist it was by, I ran down the stairs and slipped it into the computer. An artist name popped up: blink-182. I gasped. The name...
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...OUTLIER’S REACTION PAPER The book „Outliers‟ is basically are success stories wherein Malcolm Gladwell, a renowned writer, gives practical explanations of how extraordinary people gain success. The stories situated in the book always involve different aspects of success such as the environment, patience and hard work, coincidences and other things happening around. Basically, the ideas give „common-sense‟ answer to the question. These people have succeeded because of the things that surrounds them and not just only by themselves. As stated “It makes a difference where and when we grew up”, this clearly explains that a person don‟t achieve success not only by himself but it matters on the situations and opportunities that lies around him. Gladwell investigates place, time and culture of these success stories in order to come up with practical explanations behind it. This also includes the relevant events that happened in certain period of time where these people are part and been to these events. So in other words, these people have been to certain event in their lives that made them succeed. Gladwell thought of these idea to see the logic about being successful or not, in this case is by asking where these people came from. One way Gladwell explains it is by determining the important events in certain period of time which are based on patterns of birthdates of a group of people such as the Canadian hockey team, Czechoslovakian National Junior Soccer team and the people behind...
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...Liliana Tenorio Sherry AP Psychology - 3 27 August 2015 Book Review: Outliers Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers explores the societal forces that give opportunity to individuals willing to put in the effort to become successful. Through the events and experiments he has researched, Gladwell has come to the conclusion that to become a successful person you must be given a specific and miraculous string of opportunities that pave the way for you, insisting that there is no such creature as a “self-made man”. He argues that they “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” In scientific terms an outlier is something that, despite all circumstances, stands out among the other data. In Gladwell’s terms, it is a person who, unlike everyone else, is given the correct circumstances and opportunities to rise above and utilize certain benefits like how and where they were raised, their location and resources around them, and even the month they were born in. He claims that these and more are all factors that play into success only if the true element, opportunity, is seized. Part One of Outliers explores something Gladwell researched called “The Matthew Effect” which clarifies ‘timing’ as a facet of opportunity. He shows a spreadsheet of the names and birthdays of the highest ranked Canadian hockey players and points out that the majority...
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...Through multiple cases, Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” challenges the theories that success is self-made. He discovers hidden advantages and opportunities that allowed for people to become successful. He defines an outlier as “a person who doesn't fit into our normal understanding of achievement”, and attempts to convince the reader these outliers are beneficiaries or extraordinary opportunity and special circumstances. Part one of “Outliers” is centered around “The Matthew Effect”, stemming from the Bible, as in Matthew, one of the disciples just happened to be at the right place, right time, when Jesus picked him to become a disciple. The statistical advantage of time is looked at extensively in chapter one. After attending a Canadian professional hockey game, Gladwell took notice at the amount of birthdays that fell in the January, February, and March months, as compared to the later months closer to December. Gladwell concluded, that kids born in months closer to January 1st, held a compounded advantage over the kids that were born closer to the end of the year. These kids were naturally older, therefore usually bigger, which meant they were picked first for teams, and hence got better coaching. He noted that this occurred in most professional sports. In chapter two, Gladwell admits that just because you're born in the earlier months, you're not necessarily going to be a professional athlete. He adds to his original claim that 10,000 hours of practice is needed before you...
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... In the book “Outliers: The Story of Success”, by Malcolm Gladwell, he reviews the lives of those people who have accomplished a lot and have been successful. Gladwell begins his book with the definition word "outliers”. According to Gladwell, outliers makes some people remarkably more successful than the other people. He thinks that these outliers are usually supposed to have talent and intelligence compared to an average and normal person. Gladwell shows these things by searching and looking at the background of some famous and remarkable outliers. Gladwell also takes an opposite view about how people achieve and manage high points of success. He states that definitely skills, abilities, knowledge and a lot of hard work are needed, and that success is also influenced by anyone. It means that people should look afar individual’s capability, excellence, worth, and value. In the first chapter, “The Matthew Effect”, Gladwell starts the chapter by describing the Canadian hockey player’s rise to the top of the sport in Canada. The young boy is discovered by a talent scout that helped him to rise to the top of hockey meritocracy in Canada. The young boy’s individual merit is the reason for his success. He succeeded because he performed well basing on his own superior ability. According in this chapter, “Success in hockey is based on individual merit- and both of those words are important” (Gladwell 17). It is true because the young boy wouldn’t be successful if he...
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...Compare/Contrast Essay: Malcolm Gladwell - “The 10,000 Hour Rule” Have you ever thought about what makes someone better than you? Is it innate talent, or is it thousands of hours of practice. Malcolm Gladwell argues that know one is just born innately gifted and through the years becomes better than everyone without practice, a lot of it. I agree with Gladwell on the point that “Achievement is talent plus preparation” (60). This is the point of view adopted by Malcolm Gladwell in his essay “The 10,000 Hour Rule” from Outliers: The Story of Success, published in 2008. However, Gladwell and I differ on his point of view about when you need to have reached your 10,000 hours. One area where Gladwell and I agree is that “Achievement is talent...
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... Success is a result that we all always wonder how rock stars, world class athletes, or billionaires obtain it. But the question here is: How are these people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others get there? What they have is something that psychologist like Robert Steinberg call practical intelligence. This type of intelligence is about knowing how to do something without having to provide an elaboration for it. It is addressed in the book “The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 2, Chapter 4” by the Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell that success and achievement are accomplished through this sort of intelligence. One can argue that, based on the text, Gladwell has an intriguing and conceivable claim; however, he could improve some miniscule details on his support by providing more evidence. One claim that Gladwell addresses is that logical or analytical intelligence does not necessarily lead to professional achievement. One can clearly see this through Chris Langan’s experience as an example. Langan through his academic record and his two scholarship offers show him to be rationally brilliant in the scholastic sense. However, that was not sufficient for him to succeed his goal to pursue his intellectual curiosity by obtaining a college degree. On his book, The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 2, Gladwell states, “‘Then [Chris] lost that scholarship … [His] mother was supposed to fill out a parents’ financial statement for the renewal of that scholarship. She neglected...
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...The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell provides a thought-provoking spin on stories of success. Gladwell looks deeper into each person’s or group’s rise to fame. He shows that success does not occur without some sort of “help.” In other words, successful people are put in a superior situation. One of Gladwell’s many intriguing points is that ten-thousand hours of practice at something will make you world class in that particular area. This can be one area of “help” that you need to succeed. Not just anyone can practice for ten-thousand hours at something, but if you have the right opportunity- Gladwell points out- you will be able to strive. A second attribute to success that Gladwell makes is birth dates. Being the correct age to pursue what...
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... 1. In Chapter 2 Gladwell claims that success is equal to one’s talents and the preparations. But the effect of talent is quite less than the preparation. With the most important thing in success is preparation. Our question is how long will this period take. Our answer leads us to 10,000 hours. The world’s professional athletes, scholars, composers are the proof of this 10,000 hours theory. Examples are as follows, hockey player that born early, Bill Gates, Bill Joy, The Beatles etc. Gladwell believes that those people are the ones who used the opportunities that has given to them. In the third chapter, Gladwell says that, IQ works only up to a point. If someone has an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn't seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage. Let’s take, for example, Jacob Barnett and autistic fourteen-year-old from Indiana. His IQ rounds out about 170 and Einstein's IQ is 150 but that does not mean that Jacob Barnett is smarter than Einstein even though he is working on his own theory of relativity. For Gladwell, the most important thing for IQ point is its achievement of having enough IQ points, some other critical things are the qualities me and you have, such as artistry, resourcefulness and lateral thinking. Conclusion, of the chapter means success is not a thing that we obtain by ourselves. There must be an opportunity and other qualifications to achieve success in life. 2. In chapter 2 Gladwell’s evidence propels us...
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...gentle tap on the forehead evoked a reflex reponse from the orbicularis oculi muscles: the BR (as quoted by Ellrich, 2000) (23).The blink reflex (BR) is a protective, physiological trigemino-facial brainstem reflex aiming toat facilitate eyelid closure as a response to a potentially harmful and threatening stimulus. It consists of bilateral eyelid closure in response to a stimulus applied in the area innervated by the trigeminal nerve or directly on a branch of the trigeminal nerve. In routine clinical practice the BR can be elicited when the skin innervated by the supraorbital nerve is stimulated and a compound muscle action potential from the surface of the orbicularis oculi muscle is...
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...OUTLIERS SUMMARY "Outlier" is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. It is basically anything out of the ordinary. Malcolm Gladwell started using that term in his book with same name to describe truly exceptional individuals who, in their field of expertise, are so superior that they define their own category of success. For Gladwell these individuals are outliers. He tries to understand the success of different successful people, such as, Bill Gates, Oppenheimer and even The Beatles. Looking into the lives of successful individuals, he helps us change the way we think about them. He claims that a large part of their success is not only because they had put in so much work and effort, but also because the right opportunities came along once they were at this expert level. Throughout the book, he mentions the “10,000 Hours Rule”, explaining that most people need around 10,000 hours to become an expert in their specific area. So basically, those who get good usually had the opportunity to practice. OPINION I found a video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about his book in an interview, which I believe is totally fascinating and really makes you think about the achievements of these successful people in a different way. It is clear that hard work and determination are often necessary, however, luck can also help you along. This fact can be illustrated with the comparison he makes of two bright individuals with different backgrounds;...
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...Outliers: The Story of Success Analysis Latasha D. McCullar Managerial Leadership MNGT 5670 Dr. Rebecca Elliott October 16, 2013 Abstract Genius is over-rated. Success is not just about innate ability. It’s combined with a number of key factors such as opportunity, meaningful hard work (10,000 hours to gain mastery), and your cultural legacy. Random factors of chance, such as when and where you were born can influence the opportunities you have. Malcom Gladwell , the author of Outliners: The Story of Success, brings alive his assertions and thesis primarily through the use of individual success stories of athletes, computer genius, musicians, artist and community cultures. Introduction Gladwell uses a straight-forward, easy-to-digest style of mixing facts with examples and anecdotes in making his point that it is not shear genius or hard work alone that results in success. Instead, the he dives deep into the story behind exceptional performance in cultures, aptitude testing trends and individual achievements around the world. Gladwell argues that the upbringing of individuals greatly impacts their likelihood to succeed, including birth dates, access to specialized resources, parenting, and community culture. Discussion Gladwell separates the book into chapters highlighting the circumstances that resulted in the creation of each "outlier" he chooses to emphasize. According to Gladwell, the vast majority of hockey stars are born in the months of...
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...When I was first introduced to the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I viewed it as yet another piece of homework. Like any other assigned reading, I thought skimming the pages and developing a general understanding of each chapter would cut it; I was wrong. It did not take long to realize that Gladwell’s compelling pieces of work were investigating something that I personally had never put any extra thought into: the root causes of success. Prior to reading Outliers, I had foreseen success as something which occurred only under the circumstances of a lucky break, but as Gladwell stated: “Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities” (155). Through analyzing the evidence and personal stories which Gladwell incorporated throughout the novel, I have developed a deeper understanding of the term “success”, and my perception surrounding the subject has certainly transformed into something more elaborate. Many key factors of success were mentioned by Gladwell throughout the chapters of the book; however, one that seemingly stuck out to me was his interpretation of the ten-thousand hour rule. Gladwell wrote that “ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness” (41). What he was referring to here, is something I had never formerly acknowledged. Beforehand, I knew being successful required hard work, but this concept of ten thousand hours was hard to grasp. My ambiguity regarding Gladwell’s philosophy behind the...
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...When we think of those with high IQ scores, we often equate them to being successful humans. In other words, the higher the IQ, the more successful the person. Malcolm Gladwell and I disagree. Gladwell believes that “the relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.” Gladwell supports this claim by referencing the studies of Terman and Liam Hudson. Often times these high IQ scores are met with a placement in the infamous Gifted and Talented education program. Although I agree with Gladwell and Hudson on the idea that additional IQ points don’t give those with an IQ over 120 any real advantage, I cannot accept Terman’s idea that success and IQ are directly correlated and using this correlation to place children in harmful gifted programs. Gladwell makes an agreeable point that IQ only matters up to a point. He does acknowledge that IQ does play a role in success. But, he believes that any extra IQ points over 120 are somewhat useless, as once you are already incredibly smart with an IQ of 120, any extra IQ point won’t necessarily make you any more apt for success than someone with an IQ of exactly 120. Though I agree with this statement, I think Gladwell needs to do a better job of explaining where the number 120 came from. Is the same statement true for a person with an IQ of 119? Gladwell references British...
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