I am now more than halfway through the book and I am finding it getting more and more exciting
I was surprised to find out how much unconciously I might have been influenced by my environment and surrounding factors. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) clearly demonstrated people’s bias which they themselves were not even aware of. It was quite depressing to find that even in the most important positions, our selection decisions are many times distorted and one of the most important criteria one needs to qualify to be a highly potential CEO in terms of one’s appearance is imposing physical stature which is a criterion I hardly fit in! But I do agree people often make the Warren Harding error. People are so much prone to judge others by their looks and reflecting on what I have done, I do the same. But for sure there are many exceptions to this rule for instance, Napoleon, who was under five feet in height and James Madison, the fourth president of the United States who was 5ft and 4in. (Although uncertain about this, I remember I read that Napoleon was not really short at his time. May be I am wrong though.)
Reading about Bob Golomb, a successful car salesman, I was impressed by the way he treated his customers. He wrote letters or gave calls to each of his customers. Taking care of the number of people who I barely know by writing and calling them must have been annoying but only because he tolerated that process, he could succeed. A few days ago, on a television, a habit of the richest CEO in South Korea before he met his customers or any other people was introduced. Surprisingly enough, his habit was take a shower. That was the way he built his image as a neat and clean person thus giving a positive image to whomever he met. Just like Bob Golomb and the riches CEO in South Korea, most of successful people, especially those in high positions, seem to have their own way of maintaining a good relationship with others or making a positive image of themselves. And I want to ask you, Connor, as the president of your class, if you have your own strategy or habit like this
Just as we can see from the novel Pride and Prejudice, which had an original title of First Impression, we are prone to get fooled by first impressions. Although in many previous experiments it has proven that our snap judgements are more powerful than we think and from my real life experiences I find this to be true, we should be alert that our judgements can be distorted. But the problem here is how can we know if we are making a correct judgement or not? Will this be answered in the later part of the book?
Excellent post Yoonbin!
The fact that our situations have more of an influence on other people than we think is highly studied in Psychology. This is called the fundamental attribution error, which is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. Whats important to recognize though is that this applies only to our perceptions of OTHER people. When evaluating our own actions, we tend to over emphasize the situation and under emphasize dispositional factors.
The IAT is absolutely fascinating. Plus, I have a fun surprise.
I have found a site where you can take the IAT yourself!
Just follow this link:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
Taking the test is kind of discomforting…I dont think people realize how prejudiced they actually are. We put so much energy towards suppressing these prejudices however because they violate strict social norms (blatantly prejudiced people are NOT the norm in most situations).
Keep reading…it sounds like you are really getting a lot from the material!
SO I was just checking for any new posts and I realized that I never responded to one of your comments in your post:
“Just like Bob Golomb and the riches CEO in South Korea, most of successful people, especially those in high positions, seem to have their own way of maintaining a good relationship with others or making a positive image of themselves. And I want to ask you, Connor, as the president of your class, if you have your own strategy or habit like this
”
That is hard for me to answer, but if I had to give one piece of advice in regards to my interpersonal relationships with people, it would have to be humility. Regardless of how successful you are, how many people you know, or how many people like you, most people won’t respond well to you if you aren’t humble.
Hope that helps
[...] Book Review: Blink 21 01 2008 Per Connor’s suggestion, Yoonbin is reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Read her commentary here. [...]