Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

published	2007 by Back Bay Books
first published	2005
binding	Paperback
isbn	0316010669 (isbn13: 9780316010665)
pages	320
description	Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point...more [close] Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff
date added	01-21-07 edit book

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Carolyn

Carolyn rated it:

01/19/08

Read in January, 2008

Equally as fascinating as Gladwell's other book The Tipping Point. Really makes you think, consider your decisions differently.

Quotes:
But in the end it comes down to a matter of respect, and the simplest way that respect is communicated is through tone of voice.

Of the tens of millions of American men below five foot six, a grand total of ten in my sample have reached the level of CEO, which says that being short is probably as much of a handicap to corporate success as being a ...more

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Linda

Linda rated it:

05/05/08

bookshelves: junioryearadvisoryreadingnovels

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

After reading the introduction (The Statue That Didn’t Look Right), I realized that my visceral ability plays an important and significant role in my life that I was once unconscious about. I feel I am like Federico Zeri and Evelyn Harrison. Zeri is an Italian art historian who served on the Getty’s board of trustees. After taking a look at the kuros, he felt something about the kuros seemed wrong to him. Harrison had a hunch feeling after her first initial glance...more Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

After reading the introduction (The Statue That Didn’t Look Right), I realized that my visceral ability plays an important and significant role in my life that I was once unconscious about. I feel I am like Federico Zeri and Evelyn Harrison. Zeri is an Italian art historian who served on the Getty’s board of trustees. After taking a look at the kuros, he felt something about the kuros seemed wrong to him. Harrison had a hunch feeling after her first initial glance at the kuros. Just when the museum went in seek for scientists; I felt the need for that as well. Was the kuros fake? Like the members of the museum, I needed source of evidence and statistic to correct what I was thinking and adjust to the right idea. I would need some sort of analytical data to assure myself of what my initial reaction had told me.
In the end, it took a few second for Zeri and Harrison to determine the status of the kuros while it took the scientists a few months to find the same exact result. Now that is when we have to trust our natural instinct.
When it talked about “Don’t judge a book by its cover” (Gladwell 13), I realized so many of us have heard of that-whether it came from our teachers, parents, or even friends, yet we are unconscious the second we look at that book and starts our initial judgment of the book by its cover. When we are unconscious, we are not aware of our behavior and mind of thinking that in order not to judge a book by its cover, we need to step back and take the time to tell ourselves constantly not to do it.
As for myself, I know that although my teachers are always telling me not to judge a book by its cover, I can not stop resisting to their advice. Now here is my question. Can unconscious mind be broken? Can it be broken through numerous years of practice?
I believe our unconscious rapid cognition plays both the positive and negative aspect in our lives. The positive aspect is that it helps us be aware of the dangers ahead of us and what we should be doing to protect ourselves ahead of time.
When I took the I-A-T test, it showed me my result, which was that I was a racist because I was considered a moderate in categorizing the European American as Good and African American as Bad. But how can I not?! I felt it was easier to envelope to the idea that European Americans were considered Good and African American were considered as Bad because I felt I need not take so long. The only way I can think of African Americans as Good is if I take a while to adjust to that idea that every race is good would take several seconds and that would ruin my real result.
I felt like I was Harry Daugherty at the time I was taking the test. When my unconsciousness mind and body took over, I was only judging someone based on what I saw and reacting by hitting either the “g” or “h” button. Daugherty at his first glance at Harding, “was instantly overwhelmed by what he saw…his head, features, shoulders, and torso had a size that attracted attention” (Gladwell 72-3) and thought-Wouldn’t that make a great President? It turned out that Harding was not an intelligent man and as a result, the presidency did not turned out to be stable. The United States government became corrupted. This showed that our unconscious rapid cognition can something be negative.
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Matt

Matt rated it:

10/18/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in October, 2007

Here's Blink in a nutshell:

Split decisions can be good; better than decisions where we take a lot of time to carefully weigh our options and use scientific evidence.

Except when they're not.

Rapid cognition is an exciting and powerful way to use your brain's quick, intuitive capabilities to make stunningly accurate decisions, and can even lead you to have better success in sports, business and politics.

Except when it won't.

We should learn to trust our snap judgments, even in ...more

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1 comments

Ms. Sharp

Ms. Sharp rated it:

04/02/08

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: people fascinated with the topic of intuition or first impressions

Malcolm Gladwell has written a book about the power of first impressions (aka intuition/ your gut feeling). He provides a series of anecdotes about the process of first reactions including a tale about a forged ancient Greek statue at the Getty that some experts deemed as authentic and others classified as a fake upon sight. In another anecdote, he scrutinizes a "couples lab" where psychologist John Gottman determines if a matched pair will last the test of time by studying their conve...more Malcolm Gladwell has written a book about the power of first impressions (aka intuition/ your gut feeling). He provides a series of anecdotes about the process of first reactions including a tale about a forged ancient Greek statue at the Getty that some experts deemed as authentic and others classified as a fake upon sight. In another anecdote, he scrutinizes a "couples lab" where psychologist John Gottman determines if a matched pair will last the test of time by studying their conversation for 15 minutes - -he accurately predicts their fate about 90% of the time.

Gladwell coins the term "thin-slicing" to capture these small snippets in time when a human judges a situation in an instant like a first date, hiring an employee, or meeting a new colleague. Human beings tend to take a first glance and "thin-slice" what they perceive through sight or interactions with the situation or individual. Rapid fire cognition is scary to many individuals and Gladwell believes that if "we paid more attention to those fleeting moments...it would change the way wars are fought, the kinds of products we see on the shelves, the kinds of movies that get made, the way police officers are trained, the way couples are counseled...If you combine all those little changes together, you end up with a different and happier world." How profound! He is attempting to bring psychology to the masses and does so artfully, choosing his words and sharping his ideas with high-interest examples to engage the reader. Gladwell further discusses "priming," a term used to refer to subtle triggers that influence human behavior without any awareness of such changes (ex. Spain played classical music on subways and littering and vandalism decreased).

The book incited much discussion with my book club membership- - thought provoking questions and topics selected from the Blink Reading Group Guide, but membership barely scratched the surface in their debate. This book caused the group to make many connections to their own lives and world. Conversation often digressed into self-reflective wondering or observations.

Gladwell wants all readers to believe that intuition is often more reliable that reasoning and a series of data. But is that really the case? One criticism - he never addresses the brain in a scientific manner. In my own experience, I have learned (and am still learning) that I need to pay more attention to my intuition, my first gut instinct. I do not always think that "thin-slicing" is as reliable as collecting data and observations in many instances, but there is something to say about my first impressions of situations or people. I need to have more confidence about my "gut impressions" and have more faith in ME. Gladwell's book Blink substantiated that there is a certain degree of accuracy in my intuition. ...less

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2 comments

Max

Max rated it:

05/13/08

Read in February, 2008

The general topic was how powerful our initial impressions are because we can process stuff really quick at a subconscious level in some cases.

Blink was well written and pretty entertaining. I thought the author did a good job of coming up with interesting examples of good or bad information processing and I enjoyed reading those.

However, aside from writing style and some fun examples, I thought the content was quite neatly separable into two parts:
(a) stuff that was interes...more The general topic was how powerful our initial impressions are because we can process stuff really quick at a subconscious level in some cases.

Blink was well written and pretty entertaining. I thought the author did a good job of coming up with interesting examples of good or bad information processing and I enjoyed reading those.

However, aside from writing style and some fun examples, I thought the content was quite neatly separable into two parts:
(a) stuff that was interesting and seemed true and which I knew already, and
(b) stuff that seemed untrue or at least incoherant and that I hadn't previously heard before. but maybe that was just my closed mind at work.

Examples of (a) were how you one's initial impression (lke in the first 5 seconds) of a teacher or an interviewee are pretty highly correlated with your opinion after an hour.

There were lots of examples of (b). Like it was weird that one of his first and favorite examples was this guy who had studied videos of couples interacting in intense detail for decades, and had created a list for how someone could score such videos to predict odds that the marriage would last. It was supposed to be an example of "blink" processing because the expert could recognize it quickly, but to me it seemed more like the opposite since (1) non-experts (including the author) all had inaccurate instinctive reactions to watching the videos, and (2) the best way to get the right answer was a mechanical scorecard -- kind of the opposite of blink.

And in general, there were examples of when you should trust your blink instinct and when that was wrong, but all the examples of when it was right or wrong seemed very post hoc (e.g. if your heart rate is over some threshold you shouldn't, but I don't think that would have come up unless he needed some explanation for why accidental police shootings occured), and he didn't really have a consistent framework for when it would be right or wrong, which made it kinda useless. and some seemed random, like the part about some musicians that musical experts liked but that did poorly in the musical equivalent of blind taste tests -- seemed likely that it was a friend of the author or some musician he liked (it was clear in the book that we should take as a given that it was a good musician and that the taste tests were wrong -- I was never quite clear why) and he was just trying to think of some way that might connect to his thesis.

I liked the description of how orchestras started doing blind auditions to avoid discrimination against women. wasn't sure that it supported his thesis, but it was interesting. that was more or less my reaction to the whole book.

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Sheila

Sheila rated it:

07/16/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: Everyone

This book was really interesting. It discusses the way in which people can "thin-slice" a situation in a matter of seconds and make a judgement. This is where pre-conceived notions such as stereotypes can affect the way we react to something under a time constraint. It's about how our unconscious mind figures things out and affects how we feel or affects our actions before we even realize what is happening. Even if you aren't a racist, you can be programmed to act as a racist by the th...more This book was really interesting. It discusses the way in which people can "thin-slice" a situation in a matter of seconds and make a judgement. This is where pre-conceived notions such as stereotypes can affect the way we react to something under a time constraint. It's about how our unconscious mind figures things out and affects how we feel or affects our actions before we even realize what is happening. Even if you aren't a racist, you can be programmed to act as a racist by the things you are exposed to in society. Even if you don't think you are sexist, you are more sexist than you think, due to programming. We associate things like home with mother and work with father. Examined in the book are police brutality, predictions of whether a couple will stay together (just by examining 15 min. of conversation), reading facial expressions, how one firefighter was able to thin slice a situation so quickly that he was able to save his men.

The study I found most interesting was the analysis of an autistic man. We have a part of our brain we use for facial recognition and another part we use for object recognition. The autistic man used the object part of his brain for both facial recognition and for things like recognizing that an object was a chair. The autistic man would watch a movie and not "get" the emotional things happening because he barely paid attention to faces and didn't distinguish meaning from them. A new police officer, for example, in a time of distress where his heart is racing, he just finished chasing a man in his car for an hour, will become "autistic" so to speak because he ignores all cues and shoots a man to death. All he perceives is a threat and he forgets the person. A police officer with more experience will be able to "thin slice" the situation better in a matter of seconds and avoid an unecessary shooting.

In order to be a good "thin-slicer", you probably have a lot of experience with what you are examining and it just becomes second nature. Some people are just naturally good at reading faces, predicting outcomes, and making those snap decisions that happen in the blink of an eye. Others, well, not as good! I feel that the book could use more focus, but overall, a good read.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the mysterious ways our minds work. ...less

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Richard

Richard rated it:

04/27/08

Read in April, 2008

Generally speaking people like to have as much information as possible before making big decisions. Malcolm Gladwell's book takes a close look at the split-second decisions we make over and over without conscious knowledge. This may be called intuition, a flash of insight, or, as described in his book, "thin-slicing." But they have in common those impressions and judgements that come without the large amount of data and time that we often think as necessary to make informed decision.
...more Generally speaking people like to have as much information as possible before making big decisions. Malcolm Gladwell's book takes a close look at the split-second decisions we make over and over without conscious knowledge. This may be called intuition, a flash of insight, or, as described in his book, "thin-slicing." But they have in common those impressions and judgements that come without the large amount of data and time that we often think as necessary to make informed decision.

In general, this is a well-written book about a fascinating topic. Gladwell discusses several ideas, such as how (and how often) our unconscious mind "thin-slices" a moment to gather and sift through lots of information very quickly. The middle part describes when and why such impressions can go wrong. Last he covers how we can train and improve our ability to gain credible moments of insight.

Arcane medical and psychological terms are kept to a minumum. Rather, Gladwell uses dozens of short anecdotes and experiments to illustrate his ideas. Because of this the book reads easily while the author's points remain clear. His points are clear and well laid out. There are ideas in this book and are thought provoking and, in some cases, could alter how some people approach their own minds and lives.

Unfortunately, the book also bogs down in places. In the first chapter, Gladwell discusses several stories to which he then refers over, and over, and over. Before reaching the middle of the book I was already tired of recalling details of kouroi, marriage relations and gamblers. Additionally, there are occasions where Gladwell gets a little too involved in making braod generalizatoins about topics which don't seem related to his main points at all. Additionally, some examples he gives of when thin-slicing breaks down have the feel of being tossed in as self-explanatory but on close examination lose impact. There isn't much discussion on recognizing when you are getting a good thin-slice and a reading is merely interference.

If you've ever wanted to understand why your brain sometimes says one thing while your "gut" says another, or why some people can size up some situations so quickly, read this book. If not, reading this book may make you wonder why you weren't interested. Overall, Blink was an enjoyable and insightful read and one that I recommend. I would read another book by Gladwell....less

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Nina

Nina rated it:

07/17/07

Read in July, 2007

For anyone who is thinking about reading this book, I highly recommend it. However, I also recommend reading it as a series of fascinating, well-told stories. It is really nothing more and nothing less.

One of the criticisms I heard about this book before I read it is that Gladwell lays out his theory in the first chapter, and the rest of the book is just example after example supporting his theory. I agree, however it would be a serious mistake to only read the first chapter. The pleasur...more For anyone who is thinking about reading this book, I highly recommend it. However, I also recommend reading it as a series of fascinating, well-told stories. It is really nothing more and nothing less.

One of the criticisms I heard about this book before I read it is that Gladwell lays out his theory in the first chapter, and the rest of the book is just example after example supporting his theory. I agree, however it would be a serious mistake to only read the first chapter. The pleasure of reading this book is in those stories- he talks about interesting psychological experiments and unbelievable examples of where snap judgement trumped long and careful research and analysis, and where snap judgement failed because of unconscious prejudices. The problem with this book is that his argument is not cohesive.

I kept reading on and on expecting his argument to become clear, but that never happens. Instead, one story after another contradicts his original theory, and he keeps changing his mind about what that theory is. For example, a point he makes is that someone's intuition can lead to the right conclusion, while deliberate analysis by experts considering all information available can be completely off. However, in all his stories where someone made a good snap judgement, that person was an expert and was able to use his judgement under a high-stress situation precisely because of his long career of careful study or of many experiences in that situation. Another problem is that he seems to think that one can know ahead of time when to use their snap judgement or when to carefully research something and consider all information available. The problem with that part of his argument is that, in all the examples where the person's snap judgement failed, that person was not aware of his subconscious prejudices because they were, obviously, subconscious. In the afterward he wrote after the book was published, he tried to reconcile these contraditions, but it was still not convincing.

Regardless, his examples really are fascinating, and he really is a great story-teller. I think if you read this book without the expections that I had, and without trying to mentally place each example in a larger framework of what you think his argument is, you would very much enjoy it....less

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Laurie

Laurie rated it:

09/03/07

bookshelves: non-fiction, self-help

Read in January, 2007

The funny thing is that I don't consider myself to be a literary or intellectual snob at all but I really feel that it is not reality television, not celebrity talk shows, and not pop punk records but instead this genre of books that will be the downfall of our civilization. The studies referenced in this book are sometimes fascinating (the only one I really remember is the online racial profiling test, that blew my mind) but are usually poorly cited. At best, they must leave even the most ind...more

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5 comments

Margaret

Margaret rated it:

(review of isbn 1586217194)

08/13/07

I think this book wins my prize for Most Easily Misinterpreted to Serve Personal Agendas. Gladwell gets so into the interesting details of the case he's building, he really doesn't emphasize the final conclusions of the book at all, leaving people to think that the interesting details are the whole point, which is unfortunate. But then again, I'm not 100% sure I got the whole point.

Most of the folks I know think that this book is about how a person's gut instincts can be a better read of a s...more

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Snezan

Snezan rated it:

12/10/07

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: anyone with an interest in human interaction

The novel 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...more

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Michelle

Michelle rated it:

05/03/08

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: people who are interested in people

I read The Tipping Point years ago and loved it, so when I recently happened across Blink on the library shelves, I nabbed it. This is a fascinating book, though when I finished it I came away with a general feeling of "so what's the point?" In short, the book is about how some people have fine tuned their skills to be able to immediately judge things in the blink of an eye. One example used was an ancient sculpture that a museum considered a major find. Many experts had studied it and...more I read The Tipping Point years ago and loved it, so when I recently happened across Blink on the library shelves, I nabbed it. This is a fascinating book, though when I finished it I came away with a general feeling of "so what's the point?" In short, the book is about how some people have fine tuned their skills to be able to immediately judge things in the blink of an eye. One example used was an ancient sculpture that a museum considered a major find. Many experts had studied it and proclaimed it the real thing. But other experts knew from the moment they laid eyes on it that the sculpture was a fake. These experts were following their gut instincts--based on years of intense study and deep knowledge of the subject matter, of course.

But then after Gladwell spends several chapters describing how we can accurately grasp the essence of things in only a moment, he then goes on to discuss something called "mind blindness," a form of temporary autism. He uses the real life (and sad) example of a car full of undercover police officers who saw a black man standing on an apartment stoop late at night, and all immediately came to the conclusion that he was a criminal. When they got out of the car to approach him, he turned and reached into his pocket. One police officer saw a gun, and started firing, compelling the rest to fire on him as well. It turned out that the man was an immigrant with a poor grasp of English. He was standing on his own apartment stoop taking in the night air, and when the police approached him, he reached not for a gun, but for his wallet. He was killed because of the snap decisions and faulty reaction of those officers.

So basically Gladwell is saying that sometimes our snap decisions are right and sometimes they are very, very wrong. So as I stated previously, "what's the point?" But even so, I give this book high marks because of the fascinating insights into the human mind. It's a really good read, even if I was unsatisfied with the end result.
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Tim

Tim rated it:

12/22/07

A quite amazing subject, well written although I found it a bit awkwardly paced and too focused on the negative almost all the way to end, which to my mind is a poor way to finish a non-fiction, scientific book (unless of course it's an inherently depressing subject which this really isn't).

I so, so wanted to both love and learn from this book - the premise is just perfect for a life-changing concept, but fails to fully deliver on it's alluring subject matter: helping the reader develop thei...more

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Kathy

Kathy rated it:

11/22/07

Read in April, 2005

From a blog post I wrote in 2005:

Malcolm Gladwell got a lot of positive press for his previous book, The Tipping Point, that analyzed social epidemics and the science of manipulation. I haven't read that one, but I did pick up his latest, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and found it fascinating.

The gist of it is that our subconscious makes up our minds with just a sliver of data. Some people are more effective at this than others, though. An example he provided was about a ...more

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Ashley

Ashley rated it:

10/24/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: everyone

I would put this book in the category of "Freakonomics" and "The Tipping Point." By the same author as the latter title, Malcolm Gladwell, the purpose of this book is to weigh the advantages as well as the disadvantages of the power of the mind's ability to unconsciously leap to conclusions based on what is seen in the proverbial blink of an eye.

While I have read some negative reviews of Gladwell's book, mostly citing that he fails to inform the reader how to know when...more

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Mona

Mona rated it:

04/16/07

bookshelves: nonfiction, politics-social-sciences

Read in August, 2005

I was first introduced to Blink by the New York Times Book Review, which noted that his first book - The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - was a huge success. I remembered that book as being one of the few nonfiction books that I had enjoyed reading - a big achievement considering that it had been assigned in introduction to calculus, a high school class which I had despised. I eagerly sought to obtain a copy of this book in the hope that it would be as entertaining an...more

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Angela Dawn

Angela Dawn added it (review of isbn 1586217194)

05/06/07

recommends it for: people who like to know what makes them tick

I have this book on audio CD read by the author.
He is both a wonderful writer and an excellent narrator.
I'm sure we'll hear a lot more from him.
He's seems to be fairly bursting with fresh ideas, and a new, and uniquely insightful point of view.

In this book, Gladwell, a masterful synthesist, skillfully draws from a wide range of fields to support his characteristically intriguing conclusions.
He reveals and provides insight into the mostly unconscious mental process by which we...more

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Soma

Soma rated it:

05/11/08

bookshelves: favorites

Read in May, 2008

Both "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" are nonfiction writings that deal with social structures and human tendancies and the unassuming look at these.
"Tipping" is more a look at society on a large scale. It has to do with trends: what makes something popular and who is involved in that process and why it works. This isn't a look at advertising or corporate businesses (although the does look at those, too) but rather a journey into the dynamics and parts of these tren...more

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Jeff

Jeff rated it:

08/20/07

bookshelves: nonfic

Read in July, 2007

Wariness might be the most common first reaction to reading Blink, a book which advocates the "power of thinking without thinking," as it appears on the dust jacket. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, could have been more wary of the marketing department responsible for a subtitle which initially antagonized this reader, though it did not dissuade him. It was a first impression well-resisted because Blink is not about creating a world of impulse decisions and calling for the end of analys...more

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Sarah

Sarah rated it: