• Amazon Summary
• About Author: Malcolm Gladwell
• Author Presentations
• Other Book Summaries
• LitCharts
• Power Of Humans To "Thin-Slice" (ex: John Gottman, Getty Museum forgery)
• We can't explain why we want what we want
• Thin-Slicing can go wrong
• More info doesn't necessary lead to better decisions
• Contents
• Most Popular Highlights From Goodreads Users

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Pub Date:

2007

Amazon Summary

In his breakthrough bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant--in the blink of an eye--that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work--in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"--filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

About Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Author Presentations

Other Book Summaries

LitCharts

Power Of Humans To "Thin-Slice" (ex: John Gottman, Getty Museum forgery)

Humans are capable of making complex, rational judgments about the world, but they’re also capable of something called “thin-slicing”—taking a very small, specific amount of evidence about the world and then drawing big conclusions from this “thin slice” of reality, using a combination of experience and intuition.

We can't explain why we want what we want

Even if people are good at making snap judgments about the world, they’re bad at explaining their own judgments. For example, psychologists have found that people’s actual tastes in romantic partners are very different from what they think their tastes are: put another way, people can’t explain what they want. The world of professional sports is full of examples of people who intuitively do certain things, but can’t put into words why they do them—for example, the tennis great Andre Agassi always claimed that he “rolled” his wrist when he returned a shot, even though experts have determined that he did no such thing. In short, there are certain human behaviors for which the explanation takes place “behind a locked door.” Instead of trying to explain everything, perhaps people should accept that there are limits to rational explanation.

Thin-Slicing can go wrong

The political career of President Warren Harding is a great example of how wrong snap judgments can be. Millions of people elected Harding because he looked presidential—and yet he turned out to be one of the worst presidents in history.

In car dealerships, for example, it’s been found that black people receive higher initial offers than white people do. While one could interpret this evidence to prove that car salesmen are consciously being racist, Gladwell suggests a more subtle explanation: even if car salesmen are tolerant and unbiased in their conscious minds, they may still make racist judgments about people when they thin-slice.

More info doesn't necessary lead to better decisions

More information isn’t always helpful in the decision-making process; in fact, extra information can distract and confound the decision-makers. Gladwell describes the process of “verbal overshadowing,” in which the act of attempting to vocalize and rationalize one’s decisions prevents one from making good intuitive decisions.

Contents

Most Popular Highlights From Goodreads Users

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”

“We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.”

“Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.”

“In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.”

“our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way...We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that - sometimes - we're better off that way.”

“We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it...We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible an depending as much time as possible in deliberation. We really only trust conscious decision making. But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world. The first task of Blink is to convince you of a simple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.”

“There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.”

“When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.”

“Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend- or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet- understands this implicitly; you can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.”

“We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.”

“[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.”

“Arousal leaves us mind-blind.”

“Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.”

“being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience”

“...mediocre people find their way into positions of authority...because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.”

“The answer is that we are not helpless in the face of our first impressions. They may bubble up from the unconscious - from behind a locked door inside of our brain - but just because something is outside of awareness doesn't mean it's outside of control.”

“People are in one of two states in a relationship,” Gottman went on. “The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It’s like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s just in a crummy mood.’ Or they can be in negative sentiment override, so that even a relatively neutral thing that a partner says gets perceived as negative.”

“Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!”

“understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.”

“The real me isn't the person I describe, no the real me is the me revealed by my actions.”

“The entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous. They shouldn't have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn't at all be surprised that Pepsi's dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world. Why not? Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.”

“Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way. I think that approach is a mistake, and if we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgements. We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that — sometimes — we’re better off that way.”

“extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress.”

“our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can't look inside that room. but with experience we become expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret - and decode - what lies behind our snap judgment and first impressions.”

“In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very ‘gifted’ improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.”

“Some people look like they sound better than they actually sound, because they look confident and have good posture," once musician, a veteran of many auditions, says. "Other people look awful when they play but sound great. Other people have that belabored look when they play, but you can't hear it in the sound. There is always this dissonance between what you see and hear" (p.251).”

“Whenever we have something that we are good at--something we care about--that experience and passion fundamentally change the nature of our first impressions.”

“I've been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don't affect your judgement. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart. (p.251)”

“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, and the most corrosive tone of voice that a doctor can assume is a dominant tone. ”

“our power of thin-slicing and snap judgment are extraordinary, but even the giant computer in our unconscious need a moment to do its work.”