

What Do Job Interviews Really Tell Us? - antiform
http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_05_29_a_interview.htm

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mercurio
Gladwell's writing is very seductive but frequently wrong. I like to think of
it as speculative non-fiction. It has the same mind-expanding qualities as
good SF, and its connection to reality can be just as tenuous.

It is very easy to make up a plausible sounding theory. The harder part is
making sure it has no holes in it. The hardest part is proving it. To show how
easy the first part is, let me, as a layperson, give an alternative
evolutionary explanation for why it makes sense that (some) people can
accurately judge others in a short amount of time:

Consider an intelligent social species. When two strangers meet, the ability
to judge accurately and to be favorably judged, both lead to better fitness.
Lets assume there are situations where intelligence is the dominant quality
that is being evaluated. Now if you are intelligent, you want to honestly
communicate this, so its in your best interest to aid the judgement of the
other person. If you are not, then its preferable to be dishonest and lie. Now
the interesting part is that the ability to lie effectively is highly
correlated with intelligence, since lying takes more cognitive effort than
just telling the truth. So if you aren't intelligent, you also can't lie well
enough to fool an intelligent judge. And if you are intelligent, you don't
need to lie. This evolutionary dynamic can easily lead to a state where
intelligent individuals can quickly judge the intelligence of others, because
they don't have to worry about other intelligent people fooling them.

------
wallflower
The observers, presented with a ten-second silent video clip, had no
difficulty rating the teachers on a fifteen- item checklist of personality
traits."

I think, as someone who has the consciously think to make a good first
impression and defaults to unconsciously not really caring about the
impression I make, it freaks me out a little that humans make such snap
judgements. I still make snap judgements but I prefer to form an impression of
a person over time - interesting until proven boring and even then, as the
filmmaker Pedro Almodavar said - 'it's our little quirks that make us human'.
And to quote Neo in the Matrix, 'one does not truly know someone until they
fight them' - you're not fighting someone until (hopefully) you have an
established relationship. First impressions are overrated and I think they can
be countered with better n++ impressions. A lot of married people I've met -
the wife says 'she wouldn't go out on a date with him - she turned him
down..at first'

~~~
edw519
I know people who'll drop $50,000 for software on a "gut feeling", but agonize
for weeks about which brand of coffee to put in the break room.

