Gladwell compares the actions of the adaptive unconscious to a locked door. The human mind is a complicated place, and most of its behaviors are difficult, if not impossible, to understand—in fact, the act of trying to interpret intuition often interferes with intuition itself. In this sense, the locked door symbolizes the mysterious, complicated nature of the mind, and the fact that attempting to understand it actually changes it.
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The Locked Door Symbol Timeline in Blink
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Locked Door appears in Blink. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: The Locked Door
...being able to explain them. Put another way, snap judgments take place behind a “ locked door .” When people try to explain their snap judgments, the explanations are never very convincing....
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...behavior. Perhaps, Gladwell suggests, it would be better to keep certain human behavior behind a locked door .
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Chapter 4: Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory
...danger was, the firefighter was able to make a rapid judgment from behind the “ locked door ” of his mind, and save his friends’ lives. During the 2000 war game, the...
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Chapter 5: Kenna’s Dilemma
...food tasting—in other words, they have a sophisticated understanding of “what goes on behind the locked door of their unconscious.”
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