Tess+Jacobson+RP+Post+2

RP Post #2

1. How do people cope with different types of failure?

2. "The Art of Failure"

3. Malcolm Gladwell

4. http://gladwell.com/the-art-of-failure/

5. Website, accessed on May 23rd, 2014.

6. SOAPSTONE:
 * Subject- failure, choking, panicking, stereotypes, performance studies
 * Occasion- Gladwell's curiosity about why people fumble and fail
 * Audience- readers of The New Yorker, Gladwell fans, those interested in why people fumble
 * Purpose- explain the difference between choking and panicking, make a statement about how failure is not indicative of ineptitude
 * Speaker- Gladwell, Willingham, Morphew, Langewiesche, Steele
 * Tone- informative, contemplative

7. This article compares choking and panicking. Choking is the reversion to basic knowledge under stress and panicking is the reversion to instinct under stress. Both choking and panicking cause people to fumble and fail in sports matches, scuba diving, piloting a plane, etc. Performance studies show that when people believe that a stereotype is being tested, the results often match with the stereotype because of the stress that the test takers are under.

8. Gladwell claims that the situation a person is in is more influential to their performance than the actual skills of the person.

9. I'm mostly persuaded by Gladwell's interpretation of failure. He uses an extensive example of some person or group of people under stress to back up each point that he makes. His explanations of panicking and choking easily relate to me as does his writing about the general human reactions.

10. "If panicking is conventional failure, choking is paradoxical failure." "We live in an age obsessed with success, with documenting the myriad ways by which talented people overcome challenges and obstacles. There is as much to be learned, though, from documenting the m yriad ways in which talented people sometimes fail." "when black students are put into a situation where they are directly confronted with a stereotype about their group–in this case, one having to do with intelligence–the resulting pressure causes their performance to suffer." "sometimes a poor performance reflects not the innate ability of the performer but the complexion of the audience; and that sometimes a poor test score is the sign not of a poor student but of a good one."