Blink – The Power of Thinking
without Thinking
Book Author - Malcom Gladwell
Book Review by - S S George
Dean, ICMR Case Studies and Management Resources
Abstract:
Blink provides new perspectives on the way we think and
behave. In Malcom Gladwell’s book, jumping to conclusions is not always a bad
thing. The book also relates several interesting experiments and stories that
reinforce this seemingly counterintuitive contention.
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Blink is a fascinating book that extols the virtues of
snap-decisions. The pitfalls of excessive analysis have long been well
understood; but this book goes further, arguing that immediate decisions
based on first impressions are often more accurate than decisions taken
based on a great deal of thought and analysis. It also gives numerous
examples to support this seemingly counterintuitive conclusion.
This, of course, is not to say that snap decisions are always right. The
author of the book, Malcom Gladwell, also presents the downside of snap
decisions, showing how our prejudices can, and very often, do influence
our decisions. In one of the most interesting chapters in the book, the
author discusses the power of association – how, unconsciously, even
something being so trivial as being exposed to a set of carefully chosen
words designed to convey a particular impression can influence our
subsequent behavior. In one of the experiments described in the chapter,
experimental subjects were exposed to two sets of carefully chosen
words, and then asked to walk to a room down the hall and talk to the
person running the experiment. When the subjects arrived at the door of
the room, they would find that the experimenter, whom they were supposed
to meet, was busy, engaged in conversation with an associate.
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The subjects primed with words such as “aggressively,”
“bold,” “rude,” “bother,” and “disturb” took about 5 minutes on an average to
interrupt the conversation. Amazingly, a great majority of the persons primed
with words such as “respect,” “considerate,” “politely,” “patiently” and
“yield,” never interrupted at all. They stood at the doorway to the room,
waiting for the conversation to finish. Phenomena such as these explain many of
our prejudices regarding race, gender, appearance, and even height.
According to the author, snap decisions are taken based on what he calls “thin
slicing”, which is our ability “to find patterns in situation and behavior based
on very narrow slices of experience.” By thin-slicing, people exposed to a
surfeit of information zero in on the most salient bits needed to take a good
decision.
The book opens with the story of the purchase of a Kouros – a statue of a nude
male youth, from the sixth century BC – by the J Paul Getty Museum in
California. The museum conducted extensive scientific tests to establish the
authenticity of the piece, and consulted several experts. Many of the experts in
statuary from the period knew almost instantaneously that the statue was a fake,
even though they could not describe the reasons why they thought so. For one,
the word ‘fresh’ popped into his mind when he saw the statue; another felt a
wave of “‘intuitive repulsion.” Eventually, the museum bought the piece – which,
subsequently, was exposed as a fake.
According to the author, this is an excellent example of thin-slicing. When
faced with the statue, rather than examine it carefully and arrive at a
conclusion about whether it was fake or not, the experts looked at some of its
crucial features, did a few calculations, and came to the conclusion that it was
a fake. At the same time, those who examined the statue in minute detail were
unable to recognize that it was a fake. And why did the Getty museum go ahead
and buy the statue, even though they knew that there were serious questions
about its authenticity? According to the author, it was because they wanted to
believe that it was genuine – and so they did, even in the face of conflicting
evidence.
Even more examples of thin-slicing are provided in the book.
University of Washington psychologist John Gottman can view a 15 minute video of
a married couple, and predict with a success rate of around 90 percent, whether
the couple would still be together after 15 years. Even more amazingly, Gottman
and his colleague Sybil Carrere discovered that even by watching a three minute
tape of a couple talking, they could predict with good accuracy whether the
marriage would survive.
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2005, ICMR Case Studies and Management Resources. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
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