The adaptive unconscious should not be confused with the unconscious described by Sigmund Freud, which was a dark and murky place filled with desires, memories, and fantasies that were too disturbing for us to think about consciously. This new notion of the adaptive unconscious is thought of as a kind of giant computer that quickly and quietly processes a lot of the data we need in order to keep functioning as human beings. When you walk out into the street and suddenly realize that a truck is bearing down on you, do you have time to think through all your options? Of course not. The only way that human beings could ever have survived as a species is that we've developed another kind of decision-making apparatus that's capable of making very quick judgments based on very little information. As the psychologist Timothy D. Wilson writes in his book, < Stangers to Ourselves>. "The mind operates most efficiently by relegating a good deal of high-level, sophisticated thinking to the unconscious. In Fact, the adaptive unconscious does an excellent job of sizing up the world, warning people of danger, setting goals, and initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner. (p.11)
We, Koreans, are used to quick decisions and adverbs '빨리 빨리.' According to this book we can describe Korean intuitive. In fact, we cannot wait for people indecisive in front of decision making moment, and we don't have those sayings, 'Hast makes waste,' 'Look before you leap,' 'Stop and think,' 'Don't judge a book by its cover,' even though it is true that we are better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. In this book, haste, snap judgments seems to offer much better means of making sense of the world. This is all Koreans do, which have often led them into chaos, in between trial and error.
Our snap judgements and quick decisions have been collective, so we used to call it "a hot pot nature," which means short-tempered. The snap judgement from the unconscious is a powerful force. But it’s fallible. The short-tempered nature distracted Korean people, social system, and policies in many ways. In fact, our instinctive reactions must compete with our interest, emotions, and sentiments, so we should be wary of them. When the rapid cognition goes awry, we go awry for a very specific and consistent set of reasons. This book suggests that we have to understand this algorithm and provides some insights. Maybe we can teach ourselves to make better snap judgments.
Thin-slicing is one of them. Thin-slicing refers to the ability of the unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviors based on very narrow slices of experience (p. 24). This requires observation, analysis, and reflection, which may be a willingness to think over a tough situation. We have to think about what makes the unconscious so dazzling. The more we reflect the situation and try to find out algorithm behind, the better sophisticated judgment we can make. If we train enough from the reflections, the thin-slicing may be automated, accelerated.
We can train ourselves in dialogues. In dialogues, we often use yes-but tactic. Yes-but tactics appears to agree but then takes it back. At no time as the dialogue continued, this tactic became a overt sign of hostility. On the other hand, when you nod and say 'uh-huh' or 'yeah,' you are doing that as a sign of support. You are making your counterpart happier and feeling acknowledged, by responding from your thin-slicing. And your counterpart also continues to do a snap judgement while talking to you. You may give you proper or crummy responses to him. If the responses go on a bad course, you can correct the thin-slicing later.
There is one of the emotions that may not easily sneak out of thin-slicing training. This is contempt. contempt is stemmed from your positioning yourself higher (Arrogance is toxic in any relationships). If you speak in a superior position, that's far more damaging, and contempt is any statement made from a higher level. A lot of time it's an insult. Your thin-slicing fails.
Particularly, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system. Contempt is closely related to disgust, and what disgust and contempt are about is completely rejecting and excluding someone from the community (p. 34). Your failure of thin-slicing may ruin your life. This book illustrates disastrous results of thin-slicing between couples, when they are lazy not to do snap judgement based on well-trained thin-slicing. The thin-slicing is more important in couples due to the gender differences.
The big gender difference with negative emotions is that women are more critical, and men are more likely to stonewall. We find that women start talking about a problem, the men get irritated and turn away, and the women get more critical, and it becomes a circle (p. 35).
Priming effect is another huddle for snap judgments. When you are exposed to a certain stimulus just before making decisions, you are influenced by the stimulous in making decisions such as snap judgements. This is a rather well-known fact, but still it is hard to avoid it. Considering the prime effect, it occurred to me that what we think of as free will may be an illusion. How well we think and act on the spur of the moment, we are a lot more susceptible to previous stimulus than we recognize.
Strangely enough, even if we learned it now, it is hard to apply. We often forget. The book says that insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. Rather, it is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out (p. 125). This is why we have to be more aware of how we can apply what we learned to where. We learn and get to know, but if we cannot apply, what a despair we have to confront.
Therefore, deliberate thinking is necessary, particularly when we have the luxury of time. We may need to observe, analyze, and reflect what we did for making judgement, or after making a snap judgement. This deliberate thinking will make habits of thinking. I believe the 'blink' implied in this book is resulted from the continual deliberate thinking. I believe the blink is a habit formed as a result of deliberate thinking. It is true that the blink has opened up a world of possibility for a group that had been locked out of opportunities such as the female trombone player, Abbie Conant.
When the screen (that stands between a trombone player and the evaluators) created a pure blink moment, a small miracle happened, the kind of small miracle that is always possible when we take charge of the first two seconds: they saw her for who she truly was (p. 259).