Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, written by Malcolm Gladwell is about first impressions and snap judgments. Gladwell has three main objectives in this book: “to convince you that “decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately,” “to learn when to listen to that powerful onboard computer and when to be wary of it,” and “to convince you that our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.”
Gladwell starts off with the story of a kouros, an ancient Greek statue that was close to being purchased by the Getty Museum in California. After 14 months of in depth research to verify the authenticity of the statue, the Getty determined that it was authentic and went ahead with the purchase. That was until one …show more content…
Herman Miller had spent years and a lot of money to try and design the perfect office chair. The design was unlike any other office chair and was considered “ugly” by many. When testing the chair in a market research study, they found that the aesthetic scores were between two and three out of ten, but the comfort scores were above eight out of ten. This was very strange because in every other example of office chairs, aesthetics and comfort have a strong correlation. Even with the low aesthetic scores, Herman Miller decided to take it to market anyway. After a slow start, the popularity of the Ergon chair started to grow. I can relate to this because if something looks what I think is “ugly,” I wouldn’t want it. This happens to me with food. If something looks nasty, I won’t even try it even if other people say it’s good. The few times that I do try something that looks nasty, it usually does taste good. This is one of the errors people, along with myself, make with their first impressions. Gladwell’s example reminds me of the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.” As cliché as that is, it’s