"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

Thesis of Blink:

“The first task of Blink is to convince you of a simple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately…[and the second task of Blink  is to understand] when we should trust our instincts and when we should be weary of them.”(14-15)

 “When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision making, neither is good or bad. What is bad is if you use either of them in an inappropriate circumstance.” (143-4)

Summary of Blink:

Before reading this Blink was continuously summarized to me as the “explanation on why you should follow your gut,” or “the book about following your instincts.” As I was reading it I naturally and this in the back of my mind with the ideas that Blink was going to be an explanation of intuition or gut instinct. However, the book is not that explanation. Blink is about the first instinct and gut reaction, by Gladwell analyses all possible aspects of this. What is good about a first impression, what can be bad about these impressions. When you can trust your instinct and when you can’t. Also, how your surroundings can inadvertently change your mind in a moresubtlethanbrainwashing kind of way.

Going into Blink with that mindset left me a little confused. There would be times I would be reading and I would understand Gladwell’s argument anymore because I didn’t understand the thesis. After a couple of days of mulling it over to figure out what happened and where I went wrong I found that nothing was missing from the book, it was my preconception of the book that was tripping me up. With everything about the books being said and then the introduction with the Getty and the korus reassured me that this was going to be about how indicts are right. However, that was not the case

Gladwell discusses under what circumstances instincts can trusted or disregarded. He looks at the lives of people in several different fields (experts and nouves) and analysis why they have the intuitions they have and what is shaping their decision making skills.

It can be briefly summarized that experts, when making a decision in their field, can be trusted with an expert opinion on the matter just even after only analyzing the scenario for just a couple of seconds. More time can even act as a variable that can inhibit the expert from making a better decision than he would have made in less time.

People who are not experts develop their immediate reactions on a subject from preconceived notions, stereotypes, priming, and other external factors (such as extraneous physiological conditions)

Opinion:

Overall I liked the book. Gladwell’s writing style was simple and concise (as I could easy see another book on the same subject extending to 500 pages). The stories offered a great illustration of exactly what was happening and what he was trying to pinpoint.

The subject matter that he was dealing with is a subtle process and discusses things that we are seemingly not suppose to understand as this process is kept behind the “locked door,” and the way that he discussed this matter was very intuitive and easy to understand.

The only thing that tripped me up was what everyone else had said it was about. I went into the book completely understanding what was going on and then about 100 pages in I didn’t understand the counter arguments that he was giving to his own thesis. Then I realized that these were not counter arguments. This was all part of his thesis. Which is a good thing; because if his entire argument was going to be that we should always trust our instincts I would have shot myself, there is no way that an argument like that can be true.

Questions:

1.   I didn’t quite understand the relevance of the discussion of the Cook County Hospital. (125-141) I did think that it was an interesting discussion on decision making but I didn’t understand the connection immediate decision making sills. The problems that the doctors were having did not have to do with extended analysis verses immediate analysis. It was over-thinking the situation verses scientific simplification of the scenario. It was a good analysis on over-thinking a situation but I couldn’t quite grasp how exactly the pieces fit together.

2.   Do you think that Gladwell’s analysis was accurate and true?

3.   Personal opinion on Blink. Writing style. Content.