[ reading reflection and response ]

This chapter was unfortunately not as captivating as the intro led me to believe but Blink still seems to be a good book and a much better one than The Tipping Point. The most interesting part was probably the priming experiment that subliminally made people act like senior citizens. Pretty humorous concept, and an appropriately humorous execution: people are forced to construct sentences about wrinkles, bingo, and Florida. They don't know it, though; they just think they've been given a few words to slap together into sentences. But all that talk of aging and retirement-home pastimes has them shuffling about, wheezing, and taking copious amounts of medicine just like real old people. OK, so just shuffling about, but it was a funny image. But anyway, the priming experiments really did make them walk slowly like genuine seniors after taking their tests. And there are other types of this experiment, too: another example given in the book is a second type of sentence test that makes the testee either angry and irritable or polite and easygoing (as demonstrated by their interrupting or not interrupting of someone speaking). None of these tests work, of course, if the subjects know their behaviour is intended to be modified.