Are our judgments influenced by the amount of information used in arriving at them? Does more information lead to better judgments? Malcolm Gladwell takes these knotty questions head on and weaves a very coherent story around the answers he suggests.

Snap decisions are much more complex than we think and even when we believe we are talking rational, well-thought out decisions we may still be largely driven by the initial snap judgment. We are always making snap judgments, as he illustrates in areas ranging from music audition to hiring CEOs and diagnosing heart attacks, and yet we know very little of what influences them. The more we learn how to control the stimuli for these judgments, the more likely that our judgments and decisions well be correct.

Malcolm Gladwell has this very engaging style which draws the listeners into the narrative and explains how snap judgments happen and what�s right or wrong with them. He has this interesting collection of anecdotal examples, all of which seem so well chosen and lead the listener to get involved in the topic.

Gladwell has been featured on IT Conversations earlier, most recently with his talk Human Nature in October 2004, and on Tech Nation with Dr. Moira Gunn.

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Malcolm Gladwell, senior staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, a reporter for the Washington Post earlier and author of the immensely influential book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference talks about snap decisions -- how they are made and how they can break. Snap decisions and judgments are the subject of his new book Blink: Thin-Slicing, Snap Judgments and the Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

This presentation is one of a series from the South by Southwest Interactive Festival held in Austin, Texas, March 11-15, 2005.

For Team ITC:

• Description editor: Arun Tanksali