85 pages • 2 hours read
Malcolm GladwellA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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“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:
Once everyone has written their responses, discuss your scenarios and answers as a class. Were there certain decisions that were more common among your peers? What was similar or different about the reasoning behind the opposing decisions?
Remember, there are no “right” answers; the marker of a successful “gut decision” is one that results in the best possible outcome.
Teaching Suggestion: Consider encouraging friendly discussion among your students as they share their responses. Emphasizing to students there are no strictly “right” answers will help them focus on elucidating the rationale behind their decisions instead of debating the correct response. You can encourage students with opposing viewpoints to challenge each other’s reasoning and rationale to explore the opposite perspective. Remind students that using their instincts and talking through the logic behind their choices is the best way to improve one’s own decision-making abilities.
You may find the following Ted-Ed videos helpful in suggesting scenarios:
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By Malcolm Gladwell