Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Rating:
Summary: A good read and dinner party fodder - but no great insights
Review: After his bestseller [...]The Tipping Point what has [...]Malcolm Gladwell done for an encore? Written another blend of captivating stories and easy doses of social psychology, that - like its predecessor - will no doubt become a favourite topic at middle class dinner parties over coming months.

His new book is called [...]Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and it's the subtitle that explains his latest thesis. It is about "the power of knowing ...in the first two seconds..." In short, first impressions count. But often they can also mislead.

Gladwell dubs the ability in "those fleeting moments" to make rapid judgements based on limited information `thin slicing', and some people are remarkably good at it. He maintains it should be taken seriously; it is not a magical gift but "an ability that we can all cultivate for ourselves". Of course this is not really `thinking without thinking'. It's the kind of thinking that observant people can form after years, sometimes decades, of experience and study in a specific field (greek antiquities, say, or food tasting). A more accurate subtitle would have been `the power of observation and accumulated experience', but I guess that didn't test well in the focus groups.

Gladwell is always a good read, so I doubt too many readers will mind when they realise his latest book lacks a strong, original thesis like [...]The Tipping Point. The weaker central argument does, however, expose a mechanistic style that can grate. For example chapter four opens with the following sentence: "Paul Van Riper is tall and lean with a gleaming dome and wire-rimmed glasses." We soon learn he served as a marine in Vietnam, was nicknamed `Rip' by his troops, had "a crisp voice, low to middle tones", was confident, strict, fair, a student of war, was "always very aggressive" - but in a nice way - and he lead "from the front". I guess the author never read [...]Strunk & White and its famous dictum.

Most readers will forgive the occasional overripe paragraph because the stories are apt and well told. Like his first book, this one provides readers with fascinating office or dinner party titbits. And for those in the United States, you may still have time to catch up on the tail end of his [...]book tour.

Rating:
Summary: It does not fit me
Review: I have to admit one thing to Mr. Gladwell: I made my "snap decision" to purchase a book by M. Tombak "Can We live 150 Years?" and it was indeed a very good decision. So, my gut feeling was right; my instinctive, impulse decision, based on a "thin slice of information" proved to be good. But can I make any conclusion out of it? - I don't think so. Why? - Another example: my "snap decision" to get "Blink" was not that good after all. This seems to contradict Mr. Gladwell's rule... Hence my next "snap decision" is to NOT keep Mr. Gladwell's book. I am not saying that it is a bad book, but it does not agree with me...


Rating:
Summary: Blink, blank, blunked!
Review: I picked this book up at Borders yesterday morning for something interesting to read over last evening, Unfortunately, part-way through , I started BLINKING uncontrollably... I then went into what I can only describe as a comatose state and didn't wake up until the very next morning - what a strange phenomenon! Fortunately, since I was able to return this book for a full refund today, I believe that no permanent damage was done...

Now to the content: Simplistic pop culture. Pseudo-science wrapped in the guise of profundity. A waste of time for any right-thinking, concerned individual.

I grow so weary of the AVALANCHE of trendy, pop-culture, pseudo-science books that is sweeping over the literary landscape today. Can someone please help me spell gobbily-gook?



Rating:
Summary: A genius for synthesis
Review: Malcolm Gladwell has a genius for synthesis; in "Blink," he weds the research of experimental psychologists to big, pressing "real world" problems, such as preventing police brutality, or making employment standards sensitive to an applicant's true merit rather than to, say, gender or race. For example, he reviews Claude Steele's research on self-stereotyping to explain how individuals sensitive about gender, race, or even height may have difficulty behaving in a way inconsistent with those stereotypes. Or, he describes how how psychologist John Gottman has been able to predict with 95% accuracy whether a couple will remain married for another 15 years based only on their facial expressions observed over the course of an hour's argument.

Here's a great example of what I mean by synthesis: he describes research on how decisions made in a very short time (split seconds) cause people to rely on hard-wired or stereotyped associations (say, between the race of a victim such as Amadou Diallou and the likelihood of the thing in his pocket being a gun). The effect is exacerbated when people make decisions in groups. Then, he carefully breaks down the events of the Diallou shooting - multiple decisions about Diallou's intent, threat, etc, followed by his shooting in a hail of 41 bullets-all of which took only 7 seconds total. He makes a compelling case that Diallou's death was in part due to the close quarters in which the decision was taken (leaving only a few yards and a second or two between cop and victim), as well as to the number of cops having to make the call. He even provides a tentative solution - police officers who patrol alone are less likely to get into this sort of trouble, because they are more cautious and give themselves more time to "override" these mistaken and stereotyped associations.

For the "layperson," Gladwell makes lively and relevant experiments that would, if we read them ourselves, might appear obscure and clinical. For the psychologist (among whom I include myself), it's a bit of a thrill to see that hours of toil in a lab can have some real impact on how important real-world decisions are made.

I do have one very small beef with the book (it could hardly be smaller): I think the subtitle ("The Power of Thinking without Thinking") is misleading and undersells the book. It makes it sound like lightweight self-help that is universally positive about the power of instantaneous thought. In fact, the book is quite balanced on the subject of when and whether "thin-sliced" thought results in better or worse decisions.

More than anything, though, I admire Gladwell's taste: he has a knack of identifying great illustrations, the great psychology that supports them, and making a crystal-clear connection between the two. Again and again I found myself thinking "you know, a good experiment for him to illustrate this concept would be so-and-so's," only to find that specific example on the next page.

I know of no journalist who commands the respect of social scientists to the extent Malcolm Gladwell does, and I expect this will be the average reader of "Blink" will feel the same respect for this fascinating book.


Rating:
Summary: Sliced Thin
Review: Malcolm Gladwell takes E.M. Forster's famous instruction, "Only connect," to heart in this fascinating little tome. Around a few key situations--a marriage counselor who can tell in 15 minutes if a couple will stay together, a group of art historians who figure out in two seconds that a statue is a fake while the museum buying it spends 14 months convincing itself the statue is real, a musician whose music is adored by those who give it time but shunned by focus-group testing, a group of police officers who make a tragic, split-second error in judgment--Gladwell builds a narrative that never ceases to engage the reader. How are our perceptions of the world influenced by the calculations our unconscious mind makes in the first moments of any encounter? Gladwell makes the case that these calculations can change everything, from who companies hire into positions of power (tall white men, more often than not) to the way we all know when someone's being insincere not by the words they say but the way our brain processes their facial expressions.

If this sounds like a lot to cram into a 250-page book that can be easily read in one day, it is, and that is the book's chief flaw--we're left wanting more, a lot more, about all of the anecdotes introduced during the book. Gladwell is a master storyteller, and while we're happy to float from one example to another with him, at the end of the book I was left feeling like I'd touched only shallowly on a great many topics about which I'd like to know a lot more. But then, if the worst I can say about Gladwell is that he's piqued my curiousity, that's some pretty faint criticism, isn't it?

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Expect to be entertained, not changed
Review: Malcolm Gladwell's book is a very lively read, although one of his central premises is somewhat contradicted. Yes, it's possible to hone your instincts so that you learn how to better anticipate things. However, that seems to happen by itself, not by anything on your part.

In essence, intuition is the experience you have in your subconscious mind. When a veteran police officer approaches a potential criminal, he or she is using the experiences of many similar situations, most of which happen in a matter of seconds. But they still collect as memory in the subconscious mind. I would argue that you can't just make a New Year's resolution to learn how to use your intuition better. It takes life experience and a number of parallel situations to get to that point.

The case studies and vignettes in this book are very entertaining and cross a wide variety of disciplines. They make for a very fast read because people can relate to many of them. But don't expect them to teach you anything by themselves. Many people, however, could read them and relate to experiences in their life where their instincts have taken over. And this book might help explain how they got there.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book, thoroughly enjoyed it
Review: Since reading the Tipping Point couple of months ago I became a big fan of Malcom Gladwell and have sent the book as a birthday gift to at least 5 people. I mention this just to worn you that I am a little biased.

Gladwell is extremely good at simplifying common phenomena, which is usually known by many but is usually too complex to describe. He is also a master in gluing you to his books. He does this through the number of case studies each of which is a mini course in its field.

The part that liked most was the case study about the pentagon's war game. It is a crash course in leadership and team management which is very very informative and entertaining at the same time.


Rating:
Summary: I cannot think of a title at this very moment
Review: this book is called blink. it is written by a man named martin gladwell. he has lots of hair. i know this because there is a picture of him on the dustjacket. have you seen it? i don't think you will like this book. save your money and buy something nice for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: A series of fascinating, if loosely coupled, anecdotes
Review: This book is packed full of interesting stories, most of which adhere to the central theme - we have a second mode of thinking. Mr. Gladwell forecefully argues for the relevance of recognising this "thin-slicing" mode, showing that it acts whether we choose to recognise it or not. By the end of the book, you most likely will agree with him, and come away with a new understanding of what Oz is doing behind your own personal curtain.

That said, some of the stories seem only somewhat relevant to the topic at hand and make the book seem more tangential, taking away focus from the central tenet. Also, we're left at the end with an understanding that we have this new way of thinking, but little idea of what it implies to the larger world. In the end, the book is a collection of compelling anecdotes, a few mind-jarring insights, and some boundless entheusiasm. I recommend it - it'll make you think, in more ways than one.

Rating:
Summary: I'm thinkink this is AWESOME!
Review: This is one of the most important self-help pieces in modern history,
on par with classics of the self-help genre such as
How To Win Friends and Influence People
Nothing Down
Awaken the Giant Within
Secrets of Snesual Lovemaking
GODDESS WORSHIP
and tbe DVD New Sex Now: Life's Ultimate Pleasure