While attempting to explain the subconscious to the layman, Gladwell confuses the subconscious for bold ignorance in chapter two "The Locked Door" where he cites a psychological experiment to support his argument that the subconscious drives intuitive thinking:
"Many years ago, the psychologist Norman R. F. Maier hung two long ropes from the ceiling of a room that was filled with all kinds of different tools, objects, and furniture. The ropes were far enough apart that if you held the end of one rope, you couldn't get close enough to grab hold of the other rope. Everyone who came into the room was asked the same question: How many different ways can you come up with for tying the ends of those two ropes together? There are four possible solutions to this problem. One is to stretch one rope as far as possible toward the other, anchor it to an object, such as a chair, and then go and get the second rope. Another is to take a third length, such as an extensaha! and came up with the pendulum solution. But when Maier asked all those people to describe how they figured it out, only one of them gave the right reason. As Maier wrote: 'They made such statements as: "It just dawned on me"; "It was the only thing left"; "I just realized the cord would swing if I fastened a weight to it"; "Perhaps a course in physics suggested it to me"; "I tried to think of a way to get the cord over here, and the only way was to make it swing over." A professor of Psychology reported as follows: "Having exhausted everything else, the next thing was to swing it. I thought of the situation of swinging across a river. I had imagery of monkeys swinging from trees.; The idea appeared simultaneously with the solutions. The idea appeared complete."
ion cord, and tie it to the end of one or the ropes so that it will be long enough to reach the other rope. A third strategy is to grab one rope in one hand and use an implement, such as a long pole, to pull the other rope toward you. What Maier found is that most people figured out those three solutions pretty easily. But the fourth solution---to swing one rope back and forth like pendulum and then grab hold of the other rope---occurred to only a few people. The rest were stumped. Maier let them sit and stew for ten minutes and then, without saying anything, he walked across the room toward the window and casually brushed one of the ropes, setting it in motion back and forth. Sure enough, after he did that, most people suddenly said
"Were these people lying? Were they ashamed to admit that they could solve the problem only after getting a hint? Not at all. It's just that Maier's hint was so subtle that it was picked up on only on an unconscious level. It was processed behind the locked door, so, when pressed for an explanation, all Maier's subjects could do was make up what seemed to them the most plausible one."
If Maier's subjects weren't lying, then it is because they are unaware or unconscious of the fact that Maier simply gave the answer away. The subjects claimed (passively) that swinging the rope was their original idea and therefore forego any credit to Maier. Yet Gladwell suggests that the subjects "picked up on" the swinging rope on "an unconscious level." Unconscious by Gladwell is correct, that is, not knowing where the idea came from; but it is not from the subconscious which Gladwell insists. Un- meaning not and sub- meaning under, conscious or aware of where the swinging rope came from, the subjects didn't know and thus it renders them ignorant. Adding insult to injury is each subject taking credit for the idea suggested by Maier.
There is no way to definitely determine what goes on inside a person's subconscious, especially from a second person point-of-view. The only thing perhaps generated and exhibited by a subconscious here is each subject's ability to create an unwarranted explanation as to how they came up with the idea. (This is a fascinating subject worth exploring alone). But because they were able to create an explanation on their own, using their imagination, each subject proved that they knew what they were comprehending and therefore chose to lie. Had any one of the subjects simply said "The idea hit me when psychologist Maier brushed the rope into a swing" and gave credit where credit was due, then, and only then, do we know that the subjects are not lying.
To put it short: either the subjects were ignorant of their lying or they lied intentionally or arrogantly. Every instance of deviance from rational thought can be classified as either ignorance or arrogance. The difference is whether the person actually knows, and where that knowing lands is the threshold.
