IRB #2- Post 1

(Introduction-Chapter 2)
The novel Blink is written by Malcolm Gladwell, a bestselling author of four novels- The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), Outliers (2008), and What the Dog Saw (2009). Gladwell's main subjects of interest when writing his novels are all based around sociology, psychology, and social psychology. Having been writing for The New Yorker for 15 years, Gladwell has much experience in the field of journalism as well. Finally, along with his major success, Gladwell was awarded two significant honors so far in his young career. In 2005 he received the mention of the 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine. Following this, in 2007, The American Sociological Association presented Gladwell with the first award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues.

In the first section of Blink (Introduction-Chapter 2), Gladwell starts off with the concept of cognition and how our brain works to understand certain situations quickly. After describing an experiment of a card game involving a stress detector, subjects had to digest new and somewhat incomprehensible information in a small amount of time. There are two strategies that we do in order to understand certain situations. The unconscious strategy is slow and we use the information we know and what we learned to develop an answer. The second strategy is much faster because it is done unconsciously. Our brain reaches an answer right away through messages that are sent unconsciously. The part of the brain that does this is called the adaptive unconscious. In addition, Gladwell discusses the power of knowing in the first two seconds something that will change your decisions for the better or worse through just a minute source of experiences.

The context of this novel is spacial because the concept of rapid cognition of which the novel is based around is a social origin that is understood through history of experiments done on the brain and how the brain works. The purpose of this novel is to propose information that offers a better understanding of the reasons why we are able to jump to conclusions in just the "blink of an eye." The audience for whom this book was written for is for adolescents and above who are interested in psychology and how the brain processes information unconsciously to send a message throughout the body which can lead to different conclusions. The author does indeed accomplish his purpose because of the informative experiments and scenarios he describes to help the audience understand what rapid cognition is and how it is very interesting in the world of decision making and why thinks occur due to this concept. A few rhetorical elements used in this section are logos because of the logical information proposed about the brain, pathos through the humorous tone to engage the reader into the novel, and a sophistication of diction to establish credibility through Gladwell's understanding of cognition.