Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

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The Met's distinguished director emeritus was not alone in finding the statue imponderably 'fresh'. Others, too, had had reservations, but that is exactly what connoisseurship is all about: Art historians call it 'having a good eye'. The odd thing is that Getty bought the kouros anyway. Blink tells more stories about judging from first impressions. Students who were shown silent videos of lecturers and asked to assess teaching ability on appearances alone produced results which closely matched judgments based on broader criteria. A Gladwell coinage is 'the Warren Harding Error', a President elected because of his comely appearance who turned out to be a complete turkey.

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Maybe there are local lessons here? Gladwell seems to be astonished that a psychologist can predict the success of a marriage from videos showing a woman going through the full non-verbal vocabulary of disapproval when confronted with her mate. Gladwell is one of a new generation of American authors who toggle between lit-crit, cultural commentary, self-help, marketing, how to, brain function, business studies and futurology.

He is a writer on the New Yorker where he contributes a continuous stream of fascinating school of Nicholson Baker stories, including a recent masterpiece about why tomato ketchup tastes so good. Gladwell's reputation was made five years ago with a book called The Tipping Point, about how brand whispering can alter the reputation of products. Gladwell called this 'idea epidemics', a coinage that stuck.

It was a neat idea and a deserved success; the title, too, has now passed into the language of business. Gladwell has a good eye for the premium-priced, branded concept. He is, as he might put it, brilliant at pattern recognition. The money shot in Blink is 'thin slicing', Gladwell's term for that ability to make a rapid judgment on a small amount of data. Blink has many of the same attributes as its predecessor it is the follow-up book the publisher must have been nagging for , but, being a less novel idea, its weaknesses are more visible.

There are, for instance, too many words. Gladwell gets very good press in America for being a fine stylist, but here his prose grates. I have loaned my copy to several friends who have all been just as impressed. Fantastic read for sure! They say that quick-thinking people can instinctively make the right or best possible decisions in any situation. The key is paradoxically not to dwell and ponder for more than a very short time.

This book covers that state of mind in a fun and thorough fashion with examples of how we can act under various scenarios and also be satisfied with what we did when we look back on an event. However, the trick to be able to operate that way comes from much deeper - you have to have the right personality - or develop one - that is calm, self-reliant and self-trusting. Being the type that is 'sorry' for this and that, or complaining about anything at all, is not one that can generate good 'blink speed' decisions.

A terrible collection of cherry picked anecdotes and conflicting data, all carefully laid out to appeal to the instant gratification of the human ego. Gladwell had made a chunk of change telling us we can "blink" and know the truest of truths It's a book for the casual reader, so the stories he uses to back up his arguments are often terribly irresponsible anecdotes.

The studies he references are rarely detailed sufficiently so that the reader could know whether they'd had any controls, had been repeated and peer reviewed, etc. They're riddled with opinion and assumptions about results, and we're left to assume the lens from which he makes these statements is pure and holy. The best take away from this self help quickie is that some people will, as a result of spending a dozen or so hours reading it and thinking about their minds and how they work, will be, going forward, more introspective, which is not a bad thing.

The worst take away is that some and I fear most people will glean only the basest concept from his promises: See all 2, reviews. See all customer images. Most recent customer reviews. Published 4 hours ago. Published 4 days ago. Published 17 days ago. Published 19 days ago. Published 26 days ago.

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Book Review: “Blink: the power of thinking without thinking”

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Some people more accurately than others. This does not always mean what we think it means. I guess when the subtitle of a book has the words "power" and "thinking" in it "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" , I expect to gain something from it. Instead I feel like the author explains all the reasons why we should not be relying on snap judgements, desp I find this book to say very little in the end, at least, little that is useful or that I can apply.

Instead I feel like the author explains all the reasons why we should not be relying on snap judgements, despite the fact that some of the time, they are right. I don't find "some" to be very useful. If a person can't rely on first impressions, or what the author refers to as "thin slice" representations of performance or taste, what good is there in talking about it at all? Then I started thinking about why I read this book in the first place.

When the new president of the university where I work started, he talked extensively about Malcolm Gladwell. He referenced this book as well as Outliers. I felt like if I read them, I would understand where he was coming from, and some of the changes he has been making. I have to admit that knowing how much of a decision people make in that first moment could have an impact on how a place is marketed.

Even if first impressions don't necessarily become our opinions later on, they still have the power to make a decision in a person's mind, for better or for worse. Still, I'm not sure how you can make that work for you. I'd rather be Coke. Can you manufacture enough of a Pepsi experience and then also be Coke?

That sounds dangerous to me, because I'm not sure you can be both. We need to accept our ignorance and say 'I don't know' more often. It seems to me that the bigger trick is understanding when and how you are doing this to begin with. Write me a book about how to do that, Mr. May 29, Connie rated it really liked it Shelves: Malcolm Gladwell engagingly writes about how decisions made in a blink--snap judgments--can be very good. A series of entertaining anecdotes and psychological studies show that first impressions can be good in some cases, especially in areas where people have experience.

He also writes about experts who analyze facial expressions, and how autistic people have trouble making certain types of judgment calls. But then he goes on to show how our unconscious mind can also be very prejudiced. Tall men Malcolm Gladwell engagingly writes about how decisions made in a blink--snap judgments--can be very good.

Tall men are more likely to become CEOs than short men. Using Warren Harding as an example, he shows that people may vote for a political candidate because they look presidential. Women are less likely to be offered positions in some orchestras unless the auditions are held with the competitors behind a screen, so they are just evaluated on their playing ability.

He also includes stories about police officers making snap judgments, and the judicial system handing out longer sentences to minorities. There were some examples that supported decisions made quickly by the subconscious level, and other examples that showed certain decisions were better when we slowed down and consciously gave things a little more thought. Experience played a big part in having good judgment making quick decisions.

Gladwell does not get into how the brain works in making decisions. The book is interesting and entertaining, but it raises as many questions as it answers. A really great study on how important the first few seconds of anything can be, in any particular situation. Be it that you're an art expert who instantly knows an object is fake, or a police man who thinks that the victim is pulling a gun out of their pocket rather than a wallet, it's very clear that human beings do have this constant auto-pilot running, an unconscious "survival mode" that gives us most of the clues we might need in the "blink" of an eye, and sometimes those clues might be wron A really great study on how important the first few seconds of anything can be, in any particular situation.

Be it that you're an art expert who instantly knows an object is fake, or a police man who thinks that the victim is pulling a gun out of their pocket rather than a wallet, it's very clear that human beings do have this constant auto-pilot running, an unconscious "survival mode" that gives us most of the clues we might need in the "blink" of an eye, and sometimes those clues might be wrong. A must read - really interesting stories about how people process things unconsciously.

I firmly believe looks matter - hey after all I do live in CA where we have the Governator Jul 19, Greg rated it it was ok Shelves: I was really expecting more from this book. I've heard mostly good things about Gladwell, and he had a pretty interesting TED talk, and I enjoy almost anything to do with the brain, so The book certainly brought up a lot of interesting ideas and did a good job of discussing the different elements that go into the snap decisions that we make every day. And it's probably worth a read for many of the stories and experiments related.

But for the most part this book really failed to impress I was really expecting more from this book. But for the most part this book really failed to impress. More than that though, it failed at being a coherent analysis of what goes on in the human brain when we make snap judgments. Gladwell alternates between telling us to trust and accept this "mysterious phenomena" that allows us to make these unconscious snap judgments and warning us against the use of these snap judgments.

One moment he advises against the idea that we need to slowly collect data and weigh options to make the most informed opinion and provides examples where too much thinking and information leads us astray, and in the next moment gives us examples of how snap judgments sometimes go horribly wrong. And he leaves us with no clear sense of how to use this new found information to make better decisions and judgments in our own lives. Do I trust my insights because my rational brain will fool me, or do I mistrust my instincts because of the inherent bias contained within them?

If Gladwell knows he sure didn't tell me. One example of somewhere where I think he didn't analyze the situation enough was when he talked about the Wisconsin Card Sorting task pick cards from one of two decks, one deck tends towards bad and the other towards good outcomes. He focused solely on how the unconscious mind was aware of the pattern which deck was bad and which was good long before the conscious mind was aware of it when making decisions. And this was shown by the fact that sweating occurred when choosing from the "bad" deck before the subject knew why or was even aware of it.

What he fails to mention about all this is that the reason for this is because we are designed to be "risk averse". It is not because we are making brilliant snap judgments, or that our brains have "learned" the rules before we are aware of it. From an evolutionary perspective it pays off more to learn from our mistakes than learn from our victories.

This is why bad memories are more salient than happy ones. The sweating that occurs is a physiological indicator of and means of prompting the organism to stay away. It's not even that this explanation is in contradiction to Gladwell's; it is that it IS an explanation for the phenomena Gladwell describes, one easily at Gladwells' disposal.

Two other aspects of this book stuck out as major frustrations for me: To his credit, he does attempt to demystify this somewhat later on, but not enough in my opinion. His first example is of a museum that purchased an expensive sculpture which all the data and scientists evaluated as legitimate, but which experts in the field immediately saw as a fake without being able to put into words why. It's purposefully misleading to label this as some sort of mysterious phenomena.

For instance, it's important to remember that these people were experts. An amateur would not and could not make this same snap judgment because they don't have the training to. This ability didn't magically appear, it came from learning and training and synaptic change. These experts learned over time.

They studied types of stone, and different styles, and everything else that goes into understanding their field. And this process created memories And there exists a system or systems in the brain that can make decisions based on that neuronal structure without conscious awareness. Shortcuts so to speak. But these shortcuts are a product of that neuronal structure, which is a product of that synaptic change, which is a product of the learning the individual did over time.

It's misleading to call this mysterious. What's important, and more interesting in my opinion, is figuring out the underlying processes that allow this to happen. He talks about autism and how autistic people can't mind read don't have theories of other minds and how this affects their interpretation of events around them and of the world in general. He compares what happens to people in stressful situations to this, that during these situations, because the fight or flight response has taken over, people have tunnel vision and can no longer "read minds" and thus make all sorts of mistakes and bad decisions because they are focusing on the wrong things.

My issue is that he, incomprehensibly, makes a literal, as opposed to metaphorical, connection with autism. He argues that during these times we become "temporarily autistic". While it's true that one aspect of our behavior becomes similar to an aspect of an autistic individuals behavior during these times, it seems like a pretty ridiculous statement to make as a broad generalization.

He spends quite a bit of time talking about this and I don't think it does anyone any good. In the end I think I was most disappointed by the fact that all the elements to create a good book WERE present here, and the failure is due in large part to how he puts it all together and his ability to analyze all the disparate ideas properly insert irony here. Evolution has built into us shortcuts to react quickly to stimuli in our environment.

Our experience, whether broadly cultural or personal, prunes, enhances, changes those built in shortcuts as we go through life. Some develop as unfair biases towards people of different races. Some develop as we become experts in a subject. Thus some can be trusted and some can't. Our brains can't tell the difference between fact and fiction, only between experience and non experience, and so it's important to be aware of what kind of decision making goes on under the surface and what factors are involved in those decisions so we can be more aware of whether to trust them or not.

Other factors can affect decision making, such as our emotional state due to the physiological changes that take place during those times, and this too is important to understand because it radically alters our perception during those times. The most important thing to remember is that experience translates into instinct through synaptic change, and through work and training we can increase the effectiveness of our gut reactions and snap decisions, but due to biases and our altered states during emotional situations those instincts should not always be trusted outright.

There you go Malcolm Gladwell, please feel free to use this in the next printing. View all 7 comments. Aug 06, Ms. He opens with a incident at the J. The Museum acquired a rare statue from the Greek archaic period. To this day, the Museum maintains that the authenticity of the statue is uncertain. Documentation, and scientific analysis had been relied on as support. However, numerous experts i Gladwell continues his exploration of counter-intuitive ideas about decision-making in BLINK! However, numerous experts including Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Hoving pronounced it a fake.

It was an intuitive pronouncement which presaged problems later uncovered with both the documentation and scientific analysis. This is the first of many stories Gladwell uses to illustrate how an intuitive reaction can trump logic and analysis. Among the factors that cloud logic is something he calls the adaptive unconscious. It's an unrecognized emotional bias. In the Getty example, the officials wanted the piece to be authentic. It would have been a spectacular acquisition for a newly established museum.

This desire diverted critical scrutiny of the supporting evidence. Such an adaptation need not even be emotion based. In an explanation of priming, Gladwell cites psychological studies that illustrate the subconscious effect of pre-conditioning through word lists. Extrapolating from these examples, one might conclude that the casual reader will be highly influenced when reviewing a book by his mood or even surroundings at the time of reading.

Gladwell explores other impediments to logical thinking, logic being a type of perceptual filter.

Face recognition, he points out, occurs in a completely different part of the brain, and is an integrated reaction as opposed to the kind of multi-step processing that occurs in dealing with language. Athletic and musical achievement rely on these non-verbal neural processes. His own example cites Paul Van Ripper's success against a team backed by the Pentagon's most sophisticated computers in a war games exercise.

The Pentagon team was actually hampered in their decision making by information overload. Initial reaction, Gladwell points out is not always accurate. He tries to explore this downside as well by citing studies on bias. Gladwell is an entertaining storyteller as well as an energetic researcher.

He draws examples from market research, Chancellorsville in the Civil War, the assessment of heart attacks at Cook County Hospital, speed dating, fire fighting, the auditioning of professional musicians, and the Diallo Incident in the Bronx to illustrate his points. By drawing from such a wide variety of experience, he insures the interest of a broad audience in this book. It's always fun to re-encounter characters from other books. Dec 06, Snezan rated it really liked it Recommends it for: This work is worth a read, if not more than one.

I hesitate to say too much, since I believe the conclusions it reaches are explored in the very beginning and will immediately inform the reader of its relevance. I don't know why that came out so long winded, the reader will find out how interested they are by the first or second chapter. I found the book fascinating for its close look into social interactions, particularly between two people, and for explaining why i sometimes I think the way tha This work is worth a read, if not more than one.

I found the book fascinating for its close look into social interactions, particularly between two people, and for explaining why i sometimes I think the way that I do. The intuitive process of understanding is one that has made a lot of sense to me, and I am glad this book takes a microscope to that underpinning of society's operation. The examples in the book are relevant, timely and buttress the argument well.

Especially the story about the psychologist that has a 90 percent success rate of whether a relationship would last past 7 years. The author's decision to skip a little exposition on detractors from the intuitive system of problem solving was a little disappointing, although I do understand that Blink is not, nor pretends to be a scholarly work.

Instead it purports to be a lighthouse for a part of our decision-making that is often ignored in society and stays hidden from our conscious understanding. We often don't know why we like or dislike someone the way we do, and yet we allow that judgment to affect our interaction extremely or waffle endlessly over trying to deny or prove our first impression. How many times do you remember saying " really wanted to like that," that being a dress or a person or a book and how much time has it wasted.

Or why it sometimes take only a moment for a person to decide whether or not an idea has merit. Gladwell explores those snap judgments in details, and writes in a readable, approachable way. He is not afraid to tackle some controversial topics.

Jan 06, Mohammad rated it it was ok. Feb 26, Hannah rated it did not like it. Against my better judgement I gave another one of Malcolm Gladwell 's books a try. Oh, what precious reading time I wasted on this book!

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