Blink

 Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York: Little Brown & Company. 

Blink discusses the benefits and the perils of thin-slicing, or, the snap, unconscious judgments that we make. On the one hand, thin-slicing can be incredibly useful. Our unconscious pushes us in the right direction so we can make correct decisions very quickly. Our instincts can be as accurate as in-depth knowledge. Sometimes we just know. On the other hand, our instincts are generated by previous experiences and the environment. This is problematic when our experience or the environment teaches us to be prejudiced against a group or use physical appearance to determine someone’s ability.

The first message of Blink is to trust your instincts. The author uses vivid examples thin-slicing to make this point. He writes of psychologists who can determine the fate of a marriage in a matter of minutes and researchers who can tell how often doctors will get sued by simply observing a few moments of video tape. The key to thin-slicing is knowing for what you are looking. The psychologists trained themselves to look for certain nonverbals that show contempt for the partner and the researcher observed whether the doctors paid attention to the patient.

While thin-slicing is a great gift that frees us up to make more important decisions, it is also problematic. We learn to thin-slice by taking previous experiences and the surrounding environment into account and using them to help us make instantaneous decisions about what is happening. Therefore, if we have been exposed to negative or positive experiences with certain types of people, this can lead us astray. For example, many people voted for Warren Harding for president because he looked like a president. He ended up doing a poor job. They were using the wrong characteristics to make their judgments. Similarly, many innocent people are killed because others use thin-slicing to assume the innocent has a gun or is the type of person who is a criminal.

As the previous examples show, the author makes a good case for how thin-slicing can be both effective and detrimental. This book is most helpful in encouraging the reader to think about snap decisions. It is applicable to virtually all life situations, but as the author shows, the ability to thin-slice is a gift that must be unwrapped with caution.

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