Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Blink, Under Pressure: Testing Fast-and-Frugal Thinking in Ethical Dilemmas”

In this activity, students will put Gladwell’s concepts around the power of intuition to the test by applying their own Fast-and-Frugal thinking to highly difficult and morally ambiguous scenarios.

Gladwell’s main advice for how to sharpen your Fast-and-Frugal Thinking skills is to simply use them. In this exercise, you will be given the chance to hone your own intuitive skills by applying your gut instinct to a series of scenarios that present moral dilemmas. Use your best—and fastest—judgment to come up with a solution to each scenario, while remembering that there are no right answers.

Create a scenario for each of the following questions, each of which suggests a different moral dilemma. Then, take no more than 3 minutes to write 3-4 sentences on the decision you’d make, and your reasoning behind it:

• You can only save one—who will it be?
• Would you sacrifice one person to save several?
• What should you believe when evidence points to a trusted friend?

Once everyone has written their responses, discuss your scenarios and answers as a class.