BLINK

The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

By Malcolm Gladwell

265 pages

Published Little Brown and Company

AS the subtitle suggests, “Blink” is a book about thinking without thinking—and sometimes, over thinking.  Malcolm Gladwell presents several examples of how people make snap decisions—in the blink of an eye.

He tries to bring readers to focus on what he calls “thin-slices” of human behavior that can influence our instant judgments and decisions.

The book explores, among others, marketing experiments, selling cars and products, results of political elections, the consumers’ responses to certain products.

“Blink” can be fascinating to read because it presents various circumstances that the readers can relate to, such as our discovery of our own intuitive power or our cluelessness. But its contradictions can be confusing.

            The book begins with the theory that one’s gut is powerful, as simplified by the discovery of a fake marble piece at J. Getty Museum in California. The museum bought a marbles statue supposedly dating from the sixth century B.C. An art curator later saw the statue and “felt” that “something was not right” about the sculpture but she could not figure out what. 

The art curator’s  “gut feeling” turned out to be accurate. The marble did not come from the old centuries. It was freshly made.  How Getty Museum failed to figure that out could not be established. And how the art curator figured out that there was something odd about the piece had no explanation either. Just gut feeling. In this chapter, Gladwell suggested that a snap judgment can be powerful and accurate.

The succeeding chapters, however, were filled with examples of actual events and circumstances that totally contradict the main premise about the power of intuition.

The provocative chapter about the 1999 tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx, for example, depicts how a snap judgment can be wrong and dangerous. The New York cops had the “gut feeling” that Diallo was a bad guy, a dangerous rouge out to create trouble. They shot him to death, as a result of misreading his behavior. Investigation later established that Diallo just happened to be hanging out on Wheeler Avenue for fresh air. Being a newcomer in town, he was “curious, cautious and terrified.” But the cops misread his behavior as being “suspicious, brazen and dangerous.”

The tragic incident, Gladwell, says “is a powerful example of how mind reading works—and how it sometimes goes terribly awry.”

Other chapters include a presentation of how marketers can manipulate our first impressions, and why we vote for certain political candidates.

He explains the story behind the Pepsi Challenge and why New Coke seemed like a good idea at the time yet failed miserably. He recounts America’s selection of Warren Harding for the presidency based on his good looks. People thought Harding “got what it takes to be president.” He served two terms and went down in history as the worst U.S. president.

What Gladwell missed in explaining the consumers’ and voters’ response to certain products or political candidates is the manipulative power of PR works and the media.

“Blink” is definitely not a scientific book. Gladwell looks into to the advantage and disadvantages of making decisions in the “blink of an eye.”

To some degree the book will inspire you to rethink your whole way of thinking. However, Gladwell never really comes out with a systematic method for training yourself to think differently.

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