Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
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: For Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling The Tipping Point explores the extraordinarily perceptive and deceptive power of the sub-conscious mind. Gladwell’s major claim is that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as a decision made cautiously and deliberately. What we are actually doing is what Gladwell calls ‘thin-slicing’. When we leap to a decision or have a hunch our unconscious is sifting through the situation in front of us looking for a pattern, throwing out the irrelevant information and zeroing in on what really matters. Our unconscious mind is so good at this that it often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and protracted ways of thinking. Much of this is utterly mysterious but some of the most astonishing and useful examples of thin-slicing can be learned.
Gladwell hopes to convince us that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled so instead of merely praising the mysterious process of instinct and intuition he is interested in those moments when our instincts betray us, the situations where our powers of rapid cognition can go awry, where we fail to read the signs. Most disturbing of all is the degree to which culturally determined preconceptions and prejudices control us. Without reducing matters to racism and sexism Gladwell shows us that there are facts about people’s appearance—their size or shape or color or sex—that can trigger a very similar set of powerful associations which explains why utter mediocrities (such as U.S. President Warren Harding) can sometimes end up in positions of enormous responsibility; or why tall people earn substantially more than their shorter colleagues; or why car salesmen unconsciously charge prices according to race and gender.
Gladwell’s conversational prose style is concise, informative, accessible and entertaining. The stories, scientific findings and psychological tests are consistently surprising whether he is dealing with speed-dating, record promotions, police shoot-outs, the human face, or the reasons doctors get sued. --Larry Brown END --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Compelling (EVENING STANDARD )
Astonishing (DAILY MAIL )
Brilliant (OBSERVER )
For Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling The Tipping Point explores the extraordinarily perceptive and deceptive power of the sub-conscious mind. Gladwell's major claim is that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as a decis (Gladwell hopes to convince us that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled so instead of merely praising the mysterious process of instinct and intuition he is interested in those moments when our instincts betray us, the ) --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
Astonishing (DAILY MAIL )
Brilliant (OBSERVER )
For Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling The Tipping Point explores the extraordinarily perceptive and deceptive power of the sub-conscious mind. Gladwell's major claim is that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as a decis (Gladwell hopes to convince us that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled so instead of merely praising the mysterious process of instinct and intuition he is interested in those moments when our instincts betray us, the ) --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
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First Sentence
Some years ago, a young couple came to the University of Washington to visit the laboratory of a psychologist named John Gottman. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Some years ago, a young couple came to the University of Washington to visit the laboratory of a psychologist named John Gottman. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
59 of 61 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Blink is well-written with a fluent, enjoyable style, and is full of amusing vignettes to catch your interest. By the end, though, I was a little confused as to when it's okay to 'thin-slice', and when the author thinks we shouldn't. Gladwell introduces us to experts who can marshal their knowledge and experience of their subject to make reliable snap judgements in the blink of an eye. Then we meet other experts whose immense knowledge actually becomes clutter that gets in the way of reliable quick decision-making. And then we have anti-experts whose disdain for academic and theoretical knowledge enables them to come out tops in the thin-slicing stakes. And then we have the complete know-nothings of our world who, not surprisingly, guess wrongly about more or less everything.
And so the roundabout turns, all through the book. If you're seeing a pattern in all of it, then you're doing better than me.
I was particularly irritated by a section in chapter six where Gladwell toys with a concept he calls "temporary autism." He is examining the question of why, in extreme life-threatening situations, sometimes 'thin-slicing' works and sometimes it has disastrous consequences. Sometimes a police officer fires a gun at an armed criminal and saves the lives of innocent people; other times they shoot an innocent person and end up in court on a murder charge. In such fight-or-flight situations, an increase in heart-rate sends our bodies into a kind of survival mode -- that is, our nervous systems basically close down anything that isn't essential to dealing with the immediate crisis. Our perception of time slows down; we become prone to tunnel-vision; and our interpretation of other people's behaviour becomes more than usually reliant on stereotyping, rather than an emotionally-nuanced reading of the other person's mental state. The disastrous cases are the ones in which this process has gone too far and heightened arousal has given way to panic. Gladwell compares the 'mind blindness', as he calls it, of people in this situation with the indifference to social stimuli that is characteristic of autism -- autistic people typically have an inability to 'read' the emotions of others, and in fact look upon other people much as they would a chair or a table, as objects with no inner life. Gladwell argues that people in extreme stress, who have temporarily lost their ability to reason and read emotional signals, are "effectively autistic" at that particular time; their state of 'mind blindness' is, he thinks, a state of "temporary autism."
But you don't need to be a psychologist to see how weak that comparison is. The author has simply picked out one characteristic of autism, noted that a similar characteristic appears to be present when a person is in fight-or-flight mode, and then announced that the two conditions are "effectively" the same. And that, unfortunately, is characteristic of the slipshod thinking that permeates this book.
Overall, this is an entertaining read, and a useful jumping-off point perhaps for more serious investigations. But the book doesn't really add up to a coherent whole -- it's more like a collection of amusing shaggy-dog stories without a punchline.
And so the roundabout turns, all through the book. If you're seeing a pattern in all of it, then you're doing better than me.
I was particularly irritated by a section in chapter six where Gladwell toys with a concept he calls "temporary autism." He is examining the question of why, in extreme life-threatening situations, sometimes 'thin-slicing' works and sometimes it has disastrous consequences. Sometimes a police officer fires a gun at an armed criminal and saves the lives of innocent people; other times they shoot an innocent person and end up in court on a murder charge. In such fight-or-flight situations, an increase in heart-rate sends our bodies into a kind of survival mode -- that is, our nervous systems basically close down anything that isn't essential to dealing with the immediate crisis. Our perception of time slows down; we become prone to tunnel-vision; and our interpretation of other people's behaviour becomes more than usually reliant on stereotyping, rather than an emotionally-nuanced reading of the other person's mental state. The disastrous cases are the ones in which this process has gone too far and heightened arousal has given way to panic. Gladwell compares the 'mind blindness', as he calls it, of people in this situation with the indifference to social stimuli that is characteristic of autism -- autistic people typically have an inability to 'read' the emotions of others, and in fact look upon other people much as they would a chair or a table, as objects with no inner life. Gladwell argues that people in extreme stress, who have temporarily lost their ability to reason and read emotional signals, are "effectively autistic" at that particular time; their state of 'mind blindness' is, he thinks, a state of "temporary autism."
But you don't need to be a psychologist to see how weak that comparison is. The author has simply picked out one characteristic of autism, noted that a similar characteristic appears to be present when a person is in fight-or-flight mode, and then announced that the two conditions are "effectively" the same. And that, unfortunately, is characteristic of the slipshod thinking that permeates this book.
Overall, this is an entertaining read, and a useful jumping-off point perhaps for more serious investigations. But the book doesn't really add up to a coherent whole -- it's more like a collection of amusing shaggy-dog stories without a punchline.
101 of 105 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Gladwell certainly writes well and entertainingly about an interesting subject - but as each new chapter started I began by thinking 'right, NOW we are going to have some advances, NOW the arguments are going to be explored and developed,' and basically, they never were. The book said what it had to say really within the first couple of chapters, with examples of where 'thin-slicing' worked, and examples of where it didn't.
In the end, what it came down to was 'well here are situations whereby 'intuition' or a snap response as opposed to an overload of information wins out' - and whoops, 'here we have situations where people have made some very serious errors of judgement because they have worked from gut feelings that are actually prejudiced, and their 'unconcious biases' have been lethal.' And here are some more examples of these situations. And here are even more examples. And - well here are a few more.
But the book as a whole didn't really go anywhere.
In the end, what it came down to was 'well here are situations whereby 'intuition' or a snap response as opposed to an overload of information wins out' - and whoops, 'here we have situations where people have made some very serious errors of judgement because they have worked from gut feelings that are actually prejudiced, and their 'unconcious biases' have been lethal.' And here are some more examples of these situations. And here are even more examples. And - well here are a few more.
But the book as a whole didn't really go anywhere.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I suppose it all depends on the requirements of the audience. As a piece of science/psychology writing for the uninitiated it makes for some interesting reading. It is well written, grippingly interspersed with anecdotes and stories. Any one who enjoys popular science will find interest in the book.
Anyone who is looking for a more coherent and developed scientific statement may be disappointed. The various stories and experiences do not seem to mesh into an overly convincing thesis. The whole is not made any more convincing by the sprinkling of academic findings.
But it remains an interesting work, potentially much more groundbreaking, but needing a more comprehensive and unified theory at the heart.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Amusing but over-the-top
"Blink" is an amusing book that people probably read too much into the idea it tries to convey. It offers a interesting leisure time reading. Read more
Published 28 days ago by A happy reader
Entertainingly written with quite some startling anecdotes.
Malcolm Gladwell has already proved with best-sellers such as `The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference' and `Outliers: The Story of Success' that he can... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Joost Strickx
Not the authors best book
Blink is again an excellent work from Malcolm Gladwell but in my opinion not his best.
Even though the subject is very interesting, it gets a bit repetitive after the first... Read more
Even though the subject is very interesting, it gets a bit repetitive after the first... Read more
Published 6 months ago by GeorgeG
Words in search of ideas
I was looking for something with substance, but I didn't get it.
Much like other pop-psychology books, this is a simple 2 paragraph theory over-baked into a "200+ pages... Read more
Much like other pop-psychology books, this is a simple 2 paragraph theory over-baked into a "200+ pages... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Albany London
Gladwell Populist Media Star
OK - I must be quite frank : I happen to like Gladwell's style. I read "What the Dog Saw" and was entranced by the author's breadth of vision and cool approach. Read more
Published 7 months ago by J. Nichols
Incoherent. Didn't live up to its promise.
The opening of this book and the recommendations on the cover pulled me in, but by the half way mark it had lost its way. Read more
Published 9 months ago by John Williams
Rubbish
This is just a series of anecdotes suggesting that sometimes our instinctive "gut reaction" is correct.
Do we really need a book to tell us something so obvious?
Do we really need a book to tell us something so obvious?
Published 10 months ago by A. Noble
Blink
Delivery was ok and the book quality ( like the cover) was exactly prefect but overall good for a second hand book
Published 10 months ago by Jemma Alice Swinscoe
a simple idea which is drawn out over 280 pages
The whole concept of Blink is that you don't need a whole book devoted to explaining and logically arguing its case. Although well researched, the examples just aren't necessary. Read more
Published 11 months ago by vibeadvice
This is a great read, very well written, but fluid. It's just slightly...
What is explored in the book is our amazing ability to subconsciously thin-slice, which many have then tried to apply to conscious thinking. Read more
Published 11 months ago by P. Marshall
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