[ reading reflection and response ]

The Warren Harding Error seems pretty common and Gladwell was pretty accurate in identifying it. I went to the IAT website and took a few of the tests, which seemed to work quite well (though Gladwell's representation of it in the book seemed largely incomprehensible). It's really interesting and sort of frightening how different what people feel deep down inside and what they think they feel can be. Lots of people deny some of their less "politically-correct" feelings because it makes them feel uncomfortable about themselves, but for a lot of people they're very much there, buried in a "somewhere" they'd rather forget about. My mom recently received an email from her half-sister about the presidential candidates in which she said she didn't like Obama because he was "sneaky." My mom and I agree on two things: Hillary is definitely the "sneaky" one, and the dislike for Obama is probably just repressed racism (her half-siblings' household was apparently a very racist environment).
Another interesting part in the reading was the little segment about improvisation: you just sort of assume that improvisational comedy is totally free-form but it's actually a very structured process with the actors rehearsing a lot before performances. "...improv is an art form governed by a series of rules," says Gladwell, not "zany, impulsive, and free-spirited" like you'd expect.