Malcolm Gladwell

In the article “The Warren Harding Error: Why We All Fall For Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men” by Malcolm Gladwell he discusses how brains function and can make submissive decisions about someone just by seeing them.  Do our brains really make these unnoticed and unthoughtful decisions?  According to the article they do.  This really amazes me and makes me notice how I judge someone before I even talk to them or know who they are.  This is a shocking fact and makes you think about who you are as a person and how judgmental you are and just how you can put trust or distrust in someone just by appearance.  One of the take away messages from this chapter would have to be the classic “don’t judge and book by its cover” which sometimes you can’t control.  Submissive decisions are uncontrollable and unnoticed by us and are natural.

These unconscious biases can greatly affect the way that we choose a leader.  Just by looking at someone you can tell whether they could be a good leader or not.  Whether it’s their physical attractiveness or self confidence there is usually a characteristic that we notice subconsciously that make us see them as a leader.  Once we see a certain type of person in a way for a long time those submissive decisions of categorizing can be hard to erase or change. When we see a physically attractive person we could categorize them as a leader.  This could be a very influential factor but not all leaders need to be physically attractive.  A leader should also be honest, knowledgeable, reliable, and a good speaker.  All of these factors cannot simply be be taken in just by a look at a person.  For a good leader to be successful they need to have these characteristics and not just get past the submissive categorization.

After taking the IAT tests have come up with some results.  The first test that I took was the race test.  These was to see whether I had a preference to white people or black people.  My results for that test actually surprised me and it said that I had a slight automatic preference for African Americans compared to European Americans.  I was actually expecting the results to be vice versa since there are not many black people in the area I live and my image of them may be misconstrued.  The next test that I took was the Old vs. Young test.  This test was to see if i had any unconscious biases towards old people or young people.  My results were what I thought they would be and showed that I had a slight automatic preference towards young people compared to old people. I thought that this would happen because me, being a young person, would like my own age over an older person.  These tested revealed some unconscious biases that were completely unaware to me.