Blink

by Malcolm Gladwell.

4.0 out of 5 stars

An informative and thought-provoking book

At first glance, the subtitle “The power of thinking without thinking” does not make much sense. It turns out that there is a part of our brain that leaps to conclusions, in the blink of an eye. It is outside our consciousness, and is called adaptive unconscious. All of us are aware of such experience: for example, when we reacted to sudden danger and took evasive action immediately, or we instantly formed an opinion of a person we met for the first time. However, few of us know much about this side of our decision process, the study of which has become one of the most import fields of psychology.

In “Blink”, Malcolm Gladwell guided us through the various aspects of “thinking without thinking”. The book started with the chapter describing how, with just a glance, two art experts were able to tell that the kouros in the Getty Museum was fake, while the investigators hired by the Museum arrived at the wrong conclusion despite extensive studies. On the other hand, the book ends with the chapter on how classical music orchestras for a long time almost had no women musicians because the audition processes and decisions relied on “adaptive unconscious”. The question “When to blink – and when to think?” then arises. Unfortunately, the author admits, there is no conclusive answer. However, he, as well as other researchers, seemed to be in agreement that a “partial answer” was to be found in the observation, made long ago by Sigmund Freud: “When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.”

Throughout the book, the reader is introduced to many interesting personalities. There was Professor Silvan Tomkins, whose four-volume work on psychology were “so dense that its readers were evenly divided between those who understood it and thought it was brilliant and those who did not understand it and thought it was brilliant.” Brendan Reilly and Lee Goldman initiated the heart attack decision tree in Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen compiled thousands of facial expressions in “Facial Action Coding Systems”. Paul Van Riper, invited to play the role of a rogue commander, single-handedly defeated a whole team of Pentagon military analylists in a war game. demonstrating that, in certain situations, having less knowledge is more. President Warren Harding was used as example when the subject of first impression was discussed, and President Bill Clinton was mentioned in connection with facial expressions. I hope the descendants of Harding in Ohio, as well as Hillary and Chelsea Clinton find the accounts amusing.

The book contains interesting and valuable information on the blinking process and various experiments on psychology, some of which involved hundreds of people over a period of time. Among the interesting findings are: for married couples, contempt will most likely lead to divorce; doctors in malpractice lawsuits are not sued for actual malpractice, they are sued for bad attitude toward their patients; one can find out more about a person’s personality by looking at his/her bedroom than performing interviews. A website is also given where one can try a computerized IAT (Implicit Association Test). However, some descriptions in the book are confusing, as the author admits on p. 66. In sections 2 and 3 of Chapter 6, references are made to a lot of facial expressions, such as A.U. one, A.U. nine, A.U. sixteen, etc., which the reader has no idea what they look like. It would also be helpful to define early in the book what exactly “thin slicing” means, as it is an essential phrase used in the book and some readers may not be familiar with its meaning.

To end in a happy note, in the last thirty years, the number of women in the top U.S. orchestras has increased fivefold. To find out how this happened, you need to read the book.

In conclusion, an informative and thought-provoking book.

Percentage of women in each orchestral section in “Big 5” and regional orchestras in the USA (Source: Wikipedia)

Cook County Hospital Heart Attack Decision Tree (Source: Wikipedia)