Blink: Concluding Chapter

For my second TOW regarding my IRB Blink, I am focusing on Malcolm Gladwell's concluding chapter to his bestseller. The chapter, entitled Listening with Your Eyes, details the story of a woman trombonist in 1980 who applied for a job at with a German orchestra. At the blind auditions, she "floored" the committee, but the moment they realized "he" was actually a she, their prejudice began damaging their image of her as a trombonist, which is an instrument typically played by a man. Gladwell argues that these blind auditions are the perfect "Blink" moment—the music played is the first impression of the committee, who can thus filter out any additional information to focus on the true ability of the musicians that audition for them. Malcolm Gladwell, a noted author of four bestselling novels and writer for the New York Times, made some incredible insights on the world of expert judgment and thin-slicing throughout his book, and this conclusion served as a great wrap-up and application of his thoughts to the lives of his readers.

The story of Abbie Conant, the woman trombonist, used the rhetorical appeal pathos to gain the sympathy of readers when she was judged for her gender, and even more so when she was demoted within the orchestra and received less pay than her male co-workers for the same or perhaps better ability. The readers instantly side with Conant as Gladwell describes her struggles to be recognized, and eventually as she takes her case to court. Thus, we realize the harmful effects of stereotyping to making good judgements in the musical world and in the more general sense as well.

Blink opened me to new and exciting possibilities for our natural capacity to judge a situation within an instant, and to judge a situation using very little information. From Gladwell's assertion that humans naturally try to decipher the emotions of others by reading their facial expression to his research focusing on pschological "priming," this book has influenced my perception of my very own abilities greatly. This concluding chapter helped me recognize the power of determining the really important information from the potentially harmful information, and with this in mind I will try to apply Gladwell's theory to my own life, which makes the book extremely effective.