The book “Blink. The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” by Malcolm Gladwell, confirms that we don’t need long, tedious experience to know something. Quick example: Students estimated the quality of college teachers by looking at three 10-second videotapes showing a teacher lecturing. When these clips were cut to 5 seconds, ratings were identical. Then the researcher pushed the envelope, asking students to judge after seeing just 2 seconds of tape. Incredibly, predictions for teaching quality didn’t change.
More incredibly, when these were compared with evaluations of the professors made by their students after a whole semester of classes, ratings were essentially the same! So know this: When you take an hourlong job interview, you and the boss probably have sized up each other, correctly, in the first moment. Gladwell shows that we get things quickly. Wonder why he needed a whole book to make the point. We did it here in a minute.
