Blink: The power of thinking
without thinking
Rapid Cognition
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
• Author: Blink
• Author: The Tipping
Point
• Writer for the New
Yorker
• One of Time
Magazine’s 100 most
influential people
• Canadian!
• Warning for this info:
oversimplified
Story of the day
• The statue that didn’t look
right…
• Kouros: Statue of a nude
male youth (left leg forward,
arms at side), only about 200
in existence, most are
recovered badly damaged or
in fragments (Greek origin)
Kouros
• In 1983, an art dealer claimed he had a
perfectly preserved Kouros which he tried
to sell to the J. Paul Getty museum for 10
million dollars
• The museum proceeds slowly, running
multiple tests on the kouros
Kouros
• Statue was made of dolomite marble and
was covered by a layer of
calcite…important because dolomite turns
into calcite over the course of hundreds or
thousands of years…didn’t appear to be a
contemporary fake
• The kouros was purchased by the
museum after a 14 month investigation
Problem:
• The statue didn’t look right
• One art historian first noted this while staring at the
fingernails of the statue but couldn’t articulate the
problem
• An expert on Greek sculpture also felt it was fake the
moment she saw it but wasn’t sure why
• A former museum director noted that his first thought
upon seeing the statue was “fresh”, not the expected
reaction to a 2000 year old statue
• No one could articulate the problem, every one of these
experts, however, had an instinctive sense that the
statue was a fake
