Deceptive Appearances

Those of you who have not seen this video from a popular reality show in the UK - "Britian's Got Talent" should watch it. This video in a short span has become the second most watched YouTube video of all time with 100 million hits already over a weekend, and will soon become number 1 when it crosses 118 million mark.

And don't watch it completely at one go - first watch the first minute of the video; pause it and contemplate what the rest of it is going to be; and then watch the rest!

Done it!! (No? Then watch it first ... don't read the rest of this post)

I bet you can't say you knew this would happen! In the first one minute, no one would expect that Susan Boyle would sing like a canary in the next 5 minutes.

It goes on miles to say about how much our appearances affect our perception of people. This is what Malcom Gladwell has argued in his book blink that we often base our decisions on 'perceptions' - which is why you are more likely to find a tall CXO than a short one. The inherent process of thin slicing that we do often might be leading us to make a wrong conclusion (as most of us would do in case of Susan Boyle).

It is indeed - as Amanda Holden put it - a wake up call!!

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