When one sees a person, immediately, there are judgments, evaluations and assumptions going on behind the scenes. Seniors are full of themselves; jocks are stupid; rich kids are snobs; freshmen are annoying; this is what people say in the hallways every day.

First impressions bad or good occur all the time. In Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling novel Blink he explains these initial judgments, or subconscious messages to one’s brain, which he characterizes as “thin-slicing”. Unfortunately, this bias can be inaccurate and harmful to all involved. Gladwell provides a dramatic, informative and thought-provoking novel about our own mind and how it works.

One instance Gladwell uses to illustrate the truly negative effects of thin-slicing, is the story of a man, Amadou Diallo, a man who lived in a working-class and drug infested neighborhood in New York City. On Feb. 3, 1999 Diallo went on the front stoop outside his apartment to get some air, when plainclothes police officers, patrolling the area at the time, assumed he was suspicious so they approached him. Diallo got scared and ran inside, while reaching into his pocket for what police assumed to be a gun, so the police immediately shot and killed him all in a few seconds.

When the police inspected the body, the object from his pocket was his wallet, not a gun. Yet Diallo’s body was filled with 41 bullets. Diallo had done no crime, only running from those he perceived to be muggers.