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.
Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.
Short Answer
1. How would you define “intuition”? Would you say that “intuition” is a scientific concept, a spiritual one, or something else entirely?
Teaching Suggestion: In addition to snap judgments, pattern recognition, and common sense, intuition is one of the various types of Fast-and-Frugal Thinking that Gladwell offers up in his discussion of How Fast-and-Frugal Thinking Serves Humans. Intuition is also a concept that students will have likely heard of and/or thought about, though possibly not in a social scientific/psychological context. In this discussion, consider having students share their own definitions of “intuition” before guiding the conversation toward the lesser-known social scientific and psychological research around the human capacity for intuition.
2. Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist and writer who, according to this article, is “best known for his unique perspective on popular culture” and who “adeptly treads the boundary between popularizer and intellectual.
By Malcolm Gladwell
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
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The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
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What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
Malcolm Gladwell