Gladwell employs a chain of examples to reinforce his claim that snap judgments are trustworthy. He begins Blink with a story about the Getty Museum and a kouros—a Greek statue of a nude young male from the 6th century B.C. The Getty received the kouros for nearly $10 million and launched an investigation to ensure the statue was genuine. A team of scientists investigated the kouros; they analyzed each inch on its surface, performed tests, and confirmed that the statue was not a fake. The Getty then asked leading art experts to evaluate the authenticity of the kouros. At one glance, the experts correctly called it a fake (Gladwell 3). Gladwell elaborates that the scientists, who painstakingly investigated the statue, failed to correctly identify…show more content… In 1999, four New York City Police Department members made a blink decision and ended up killing an African immigrant, Amadou Diallo. Diallo was standing outside an apartment building late at night and didn’t answer when the police called to him. He reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet, but the police officers made the snap decision that he was reaching for a gun and they fired at him forty-one times (Ravitch, Diane. “Blink. Think. Blank. Bunk. Solid snap judgments are deeply grounded.”). Their snap judgment cost Diallo’s life. Diallo’s murder verifies that it is often dangerous to make snap judgments about people. When meeting a person for the first time, our first impression of that person is built on stereotypes. We can only judge that person based on what we see, so we consider factors like ethnicity, gender, and clothing. We subconsciously associate these traits with thoughts and feelings and they cloud our judgment. For this reason, I don’t agree that first impressions and snap judgments are trustworthy. I don’t believe that snap judgments match the logical process that goes on in one’s mind when making decisions
