Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. How would you define “intuition”? Would you say that “intuition” is a scientific concept, a spiritual one, or something else entirely?

Teaching Suggestion: In addition to snap judgments, pattern recognition, and common sense, intuition is one of the various types of Fast-and-Frugal Thinking that Gladwell offers up in his discussion of How Fast-and-Frugal Thinking Serves Humans. Intuition is also a concept that students will have likely heard of and/or thought about, though possibly not in a social scientific/psychological context. In this discussion, consider having students share their own definitions of “intuition” before guiding the conversation toward the lesser-known social scientific and psychological research around the human capacity for intuition.

• “Can We Rely on Our Intuition?” – This article from Scientific American evaluates the idea of trusting one’s “gut.”
• “Your Intuition Is Real. Here’s How to Strengthen It.” – This article from CNN gives another view on the topic of intuition.

2. Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist and writer who, according to this article, is “best known for his unique perspective on popular culture” and who “adeptly treads the boundary between popularizer and intellectual.