Blink

Read from Monday, April 18th to Thursday, April 21st.

Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell.  I've read most of Gladwell's other work, like Outliers and The Tipping Point, and now finally got around to reading Blink.  This book is the explanation of the instantaneous impressions that we as human beings make.  Our brains are incredibly powerful instruments, and they often operate behind a 'locked door,' which is our subconscious decisions and impressions.  The argument in this book can seem a bit tricky, because Gladwell argues that sometimes our first impressions and instincts are helpful, and sometimes they are not.  The trick is to learn to distinguish between the two.

As with all books like this, I enjoy reading about the behavioral experiments that researchers have performed.  Gladwell structures his book into a few different chapters about different real life examples of these first impressions.  He tells the story of a museum that was thinking about buying an ancient Greek statue.  Many experts did all kinds of research, testing the stone, the technique, receipts from past collectors, but they concluded it was real.  However, a few experts looked at it and determined that it just didn't feel right.  They were right, it was a forgery.  How did they know it was a fake?  They just did, and they can't explain their reasoning.  That is an example of Gladwell's 'locked door' subconscious. 

Thin slicing is a theory that you don't need a lot of information to make decisions.  There are psychologists that can examine a few minutes of a couple's conversation and determine, with good accuracy, whether they will stay together.  Sometimes, too much information can actually cloud our judgment.  The Pentagon staged a war game about how to deal with a rogue general in the Middle East.  The guy chosen to play this general, Paul Van Riper, didn't have as much intel as the U.S. government, but because of that he was able to move swiftly and launch a successful strike. 

Sometimes our first impressions are not right, however.  Warren Harding was elected president because he looked presidential, and he could sell his looks to the American public.  He was a terrible president.  There are positive and negative connotations that we associate with certain things and looks, and these associations are not always correct.  For example, one experiment showed it is easier to make snap judgments about blacks being 'evil' and whites being 'good' than the other way around.  This does not mean we are racist, it is just that society has permeated so deeply into our subconscious that those connections come more automatically. 

Experts are better at making the snap decisions about their areas of expertise.  For example, music industry people loved this new artist Kenna, but because his sound was different he tested terribly in focus groups and did not get any radio play.  We are nervous about things we don't know, so we wait for other people before we form our opinions.  Our brains are also incredibly adept at picking up facial expressions and discerning what they mean.  One researcher mapped out and categorized all the possible muscle movements of the face.  However, in moments of high stress, our brains can shut off and misinterpret these signals, as displayed in one famous incident in NYC where four cops shot an unarmed man who they thought had a gun.

Blink was interesting and a quick read.  Sometimes it could get confusing because Gladwell sometimes argued quick, snap decisions were good and sometimes not.  However, it was still enlightening to learn what goes on in those first few fractions of a second inside our mind.  I'd definitely recommend it.  Three and a half out of five stars.