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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:
 This book has everything, apart from a coherent argument January 28, 2007
31 out of 37 found this review helpful
Blink is well-written with a fluent, enjoyable style, and is full of amusing vignettes to catch your interest. By the end, though, I was a little confused as to when it's okay to 'thin-slice', and when the author thinks we shouldn't. Gladwell introduces us to experts who can marshal their knowledge and experience of their subject to make reliable snap judgements in the blink of an eye. Then we meet other experts whose immense knowledge actually becomes clutter that gets in the way of reliable quick decision-making. And then we have anti-experts whose disdain for academic and theoretical knowledge enables them to come out tops in the thin-slicing stakes. And then we have the complete know-nothings of our world who, not surprisingly, guess wrongly about more or less everything.
And so the roundabout turns, all through the book. If you're seeing a pattern in all of it, then you're doing better than me.
I was particularly irritated by a section in chapter six where Gladwell toys with a concept he calls "temporary autism." He is examining the question of why, in extreme life-threatening situations, sometimes 'thin-slicing' works and sometimes it has disastrous consequences. Sometimes a police officer fires a gun at an armed criminal and saves the lives of innocent people; other times they shoot an innocent person and end up in court on a murder charge. In such fight-or-flight situations, an increase in heart-rate sends our bodies into a kind of survival mode -- that is, our nervous systems basically close down anything that isn't essential to dealing with the immediate crisis. Our perception of time slows down; we become prone to tunnel-vision; and our interpretation of other people's behaviour becomes more than usually reliant on stereotyping, rather than an emotionally-nuanced reading of the other person's mental state. The disastrous cases are the ones in which this process has gone too far and heightened arousal has given way to panic. Gladwell compares the 'mind blindness', as he calls it, of people in this situation with the indifference to social stimuli that is characteristic of autism -- autistic people typically have an inability to 'read' the emotions of others, and in fact look upon other people much as they would a chair or a table, as objects with no inner life. Gladwell argues that people in extreme stress, who have temporarily lost their ability to reason and read emotional signals, are "effectively autistic" at that particular time; their state of 'mind blindness' is, he thinks, a state of "temporary autism."
But you don't need to be a psychologist to see how weak that comparison is. The author has simply picked out one characteristic of autism, noted that a similar characteristic appears to be present when a person is in fight-or-flight mode, and then announced that the two conditions are "effectively" the same. And that, unfortunately, is characteristic of the slipshod thinking that permeates this book.
Overall, this is an entertaining read, and a useful jumping-off point perhaps for more serious investigations. But the book doesn't really add up to a coherent whole -- it's more like a collection of amusing shaggy-dog stories without a punchline.
 A great read that entertains with everyday examples January 2, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Malcolm Gladwell takes us on a journey through a vast range of human experiences (such as racism, dating, identifying genuine works of art, autism, police shooting the wrong man), exploring how our pre-programmed unconscious may be influencing us far more than we realize.
Blink is defined as "the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that spontaneously arise whenever we meet a new person or confront a complex situation or have to make a decision under conditions of stress". Human behaviour appears to be far more influenced by split-second decisions than large amounts of information e.g. results of scientific experiments, planning, various rules and regulations that we may know are the "right" thing. While this can be useful for seeing the truth of a situation, we may also get it completely wrong. The chapter "The Warren Harding Error" demonstrates this. We may assume that someone who is incredibly good-looking is also likely to possess qualities such as intelligence and integrity. Such an assumption can of course be completely inaccurate!
The author held my attention with some interesting and original explanations of everyday human behaviour. It's an easy and very entertaining read, but afterwards I was left feeling rather unsatisfied, as if the writing was somehow insubstantial?
Interesting but not helpful December 24, 2006
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
After reading another brilliant book by the author (Tipping Point) I was so excited about this one. It's easily read and the examples and case studies are interesting and enjoyable but I excepted some real advice, how to use this information for real life gain but the book had two points
1. Trust your gut
2. Don't trust your gut
It is an alright read, but don't expect any life-changing revelations
 Thought provoking and readable October 25, 2006
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
Books like this can often get bogged down in 'the science bit'. While Gladwell's book isn't lightweight, his writing style and clever choice of examples makes this an entertaining as well as educational book. While he doesn't try to explain how we make our split second choices (I get the impression that no-one yet knows) he does explore the benefits and perils of such decisions and how we can improve our decision making skills.
Insightful, specially if you trust your gut feelings October 14, 2006
7 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book might not be "scientific" as some reviewers complain about, but it contains a fair amount of things to think about in terms of using your intuition more often than some of us do.
In Myers-Briggs (MBTI) terms, I'm an N (intuitive), so I found the ideas quite aplicable. I should use my gut feeling more often, and some stories in this book convinced me to do so.
In an era where we don't have the luxury to gather lots of information before making a decision, books like Blink can help us become more effective, and realize how amazing the human brain is.
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