about an object with what was formally understood about its
style and background and value. Whenever we have something
that we are good at — something we care about — that
experience and passion fundamentally change the nature of our
first impressions.
This does not mean that when we are outside our areas of
passion and experience, our reactions are invariably wrong. It
just means that they are shallow. They are hard to explain and
easily disrupted. They aren’t grounded in real understanding.
Do you think, for example, that you can accurately describe the
difference between Coke and Pepsi? It’s actually surprisingly
difficult. Food tasters like Civille and Heylmun use what they
call a DOD (degree-of-difference) scale to compare products in
the same category. It goes from o to 10, where 10 is for two
things that are totally different and 1 or 2 might describe just
the production-range differences between two batches of the
same product. Wise’s and Lay’s salt and vinegar potato chips,
for instance, have a DOD of 8. (“Ohmigod, they are so
different,” says Heylmun. “Wise is dark, and Lay’s is uniform
and light.”) Things with a DOD of 5 or 6 are much closer but
still possible to tell apart. Coke and Pepsi, though, are only a 4,
and in some cases the difference may be even less, particularly