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| Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking | 
 enlarge | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
Buy Used: £3.20
You Save: £6.79 (68%)
New (26) from £3.69
Avg. Customer Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 132
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0141014598
EAN: 9780141014593
ASIN: 0141014598
Publication Date: February 23, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 BLINK - those critical two seconds really do count... October 30, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Heard an interview with Malcolm Gladwell, the author of BLINK, on National Public Radio (NPR in the US) in the fall of 2005. It was just after I had to make a critical spot decision in seconds... then wondered for hours whether it had been the right thing to do. As it turned out weeks later, it was the correct decision to make, and in those weeks I had taken the opportunity to read this book, an impromptu personal gift from someone very close.
Had I read the book before, I would have felt more confident in my ability to make an intuitive snap decision that was right.
We all have to make quick decisions in our daily lives, some mundane and some critical. We make quick decision as simple as to what we will eat for lunch. We may also have to make fast critical decisions, such as how to avoid an impending car accident: do we brake, swerve or accelerate. And it's just this "rapid cognition" that Gladwell writes about so well that can make the difference.
One could easily assume that BLINK is about dealing with intuition, as a colleague of mine thought when I described the book. That's not what it's about, because intuition is more of a concept used to describe our "gut feelings," our emotional reactions that aren't always very rational. BLINK deals with those rational first two second that are our rapid cognition.
Gladwell points out that contrary to the way were raised from childhood, there are times of stress and high pressure when fast judgment calls and first impressions are a better choice than slow, deliberate thinking for making sense of the world around us.
His examples are superb: code breaking during World War II, speed dating, marriage, medical malpractice (insightful - do read it twice). He even covers things as unusual as what you can discover about a person by being aware of what you see when looking around their bedroom, and interesting views about the best car dealer in New Jersey. You'll just have to read the book to understand where rapid cognition fits in.
There is an entire chapter dealing with the power of "thin slicing" that deals with what some psychologists have recognized is our ability to make good judgement calls based on the "thinnest slice of experience." The author delves into this subject quite well, and the examples that he offers are amazing.
But can rapid cognition go wrong? It it always the right way to approach things? Just read about what Gladwell calls the "Warren Harding Error" for the answer. He makes a compelling case for the fact that we can and will make "Warren Harding Errors" in so many types of circumstances, especially when it comes to hiring personnel. His suggestions here will help one recognize the differences between good rapid cognition and bad rapid cognition. Split-second decisions can often be either more accurate than many months of project management or scientific planning, or they can become tragic disasters. In this book the author shows that you can educate and exercise your rapid cognition to avoid hazardous traps.
We all recognize the importance of what happens in dating relationships at that instance when two people first meet. But it seems difficult to face the significance of what happens in the critical first seconds when we interview someone for a job, someone offers a new idea, or when a police officer has to make a critical quick decision at the moment a crime is being committed. Gladwell makes a compelling case to make us take rapid cognition as a part of our critical thinking process.
BLINK deals with those small situations we all face in our daily lives, with assumptions that show up when we meet new people, make important personal and business decisions under stress, or when we are forced to meet complex situations head-on.
This is one of those books that comes along and changes the way that you see the world around us. It's a fairly fast read, neither too light nor too heavy, and if you're anything like this reader, you'll want to read it a second time just to get a bit more out of it.
Highly recommended, a keeper and easily worth a five-star rating. And now I have to get and read Gladwell's previous book, THE TIPPING POINT.
Please also see my review of FREAKONOMICS, by Steven Levitt. Another reader emailed me, noting that Gladwell had said that Steven Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America." I agree.
 Blink twice I think... October 30, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I was avoiding this book for a long time, as I felt it was just a normal run-off-the-mill book on making gut choices. But the penguin reissue, and bargain amazon price (its half-price at amazon!) made me buy it. I read the book within a week, and was a little happier for the experience.
Essentially the book explores the decision making processes we use, and how we are able to somehow determine the right option at a subconcious/gut level. Examples are given througout, and these really help underline the point being made.
There is something interesting at play too - the author also wrote The Tipping Point. Within the book is a chapter around (not dedicated to though) a singer. I couldn't help feel tha there was a tongue-in-cheek attempt at gathering tipping point momentum for the singer, based on explanations of record companies gut-reactions to his signing etc.
That aside, its worth it at this price, and being a fan of great typography, the Penguin Classics are a great example of how to sell and present a book. Concentrate on the readability and price!
Well worth a few days of your time.
No wonder this is a best seller. The author explains in an easy to follow way, the power of snap decisions and how they work. It October 29, 2007
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
No wonder this is a best seller. The author explains in an easy to follow way, the power of snap decisions and how they work. It shows how powerful and accurate instantaneous decisions can be, that we often are at odds to explain how we arrived at. Gladwell explains how these decisions are arrived at by the meticulous gathering of information by our unconscious.
However they are not always accurate and this is largely due to bias, such as stereotyping and prejudices. No doubt hormones play a role in that bias too, such as when people 'fall' in love and go on to marry that person. Gladwell here sites a number of studies by psychologist John Gottman, who discovered after studying thousands of interviews with married couples that he was able to tell with 95% accuracy whether a couple would remain together after 15 years from just observing an interview with a couple for 15 minutes.
An interesting book that makes one think about the powerful working of the unconscious and how to use it in beneficial ways.
Looking for a coherent argument? Blink and you'll miss it. October 29, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As with his breakthrough surprise best-seller The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell's follow up offering is stuffed stem to stern with fascinating anecdote, and presented in the same breezy manner. And while, I suppose, there's a consistent argument buried somewhere in there, I'm blowed if I know what it is.
Gladwell apparently can't make up his mind whether snap judgments are good things (as they seem to be for the purpose of spotting art forgeries and waging guerilla warfare) or bad things (as they seem to be when manifesting themselves in a form of temporary cop autism which causes innocent bystanders to get shot). What one is left with is a collection of anecdotes about the subconscious and immediate, each fascinating in its own right, make no mistake, and each of which undoubtedly carries its own situation-specific lesson, but which together sum up to precisely nothing at all. Sometimes Blink-style judgments are good; sometimes they proceed from our innate primordial racism. Great. Kind of.
The story I found most interesting though, on reflection, perhaps the least genuinely on point (assuming the point is "how snap judgments shape the world we live in"), was the importance of a physician's bedside manner in assessing his (or her) likelihood of being the subject of a medical negligence suit. Gladwell would say this has everything to do with "thin-slicing" - but it is difficult to see the similarity between this sort of thin-slicing and the thin-slicing encapsuated in cop shootings or on-the-fly military strategics. But there is definitely a lesson in there for those following the professional services calling: If your clients think you're nice, you are less likely to get sued, no matter how useless you might really be - and vice versa! That's a banker.
That observation might equally apply to this book itself: it doesn't uncover any single great insight about our mental lives, but Gladwell gets away with it because he's such an affable chap, and he writes in such an appealing way, that it seems churlish to hold this against him. We don't begrudge him what really is a fairly poorly knitted cardigan of fireside yarns - since ugly old jumpers are perfect for loafing about in on holiday, and on holiday is certainly where I read this book: as a kind of extended weekend paper feature it seemed just fine.
Olly Buxton
Swift and thought-provoking August 20, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Which is better, thinking deep and hard or making snap judgements on instinct? Gladwell makes the case for quick thinking in his book of thinking without thinking. Gladwell argues that in many cases - emergency heart attack diagnosis being a good example - too much information not only doesn't help a bit, but actually makes decisions worse.
Humans are very capable of making quick, unconscious decisions - some brain damage or other disorders prove that, when that capability is lost. According to Gladwell we should pay more heed to our unconscious, as it often helps to make good decisions fast. However, it's not that simple: quick thinking without thinking leads to prejudice and trouble, if one is not careful.
Using lots of real-life examples, Gladwell makes a coherent case. The book is quite shallow, but that's what you should expect from a short bestseller like this. Blink, like Gladwell's previous success, The Tipping Point, is swiftly read. While it never delves deep or really satisfies the reader, it certainly succeeds in being thought-provoking and entertaining.
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