Table of Contents
Introduction
It is hard to read a book that is given to you by assignment. I know it took me a while to pick up the book and start reading it. As soon as I picked up the book, I was shocked and impressed by the contents of the book. The main reason I selected Blink was because of the title that brought curiosity to me. My initial thought of the book was this is a book on life and how it passes you by like a blink of an eye. I was wrong it was more of how we as humans are quick to judge and act on situations in manner of seconds. While reading the introduction of the book it reminded me of how I live my life. I tend to avoid my intuition that has leaded me into decision-making throughout my life. In my opinion it was inspirational and insightful on how well the book was written. It made me think on day-to-day decisions and question myself “does this feel right?” I started to question myself what is the driver that makes me feel this way? That gut feeling of the decision just taken will it contradict the logic.
With that choice that I just made was it based on gut feeling or based on facts? As well as it made me reflect on how I am quick on impulse and I tend to make quick judgments and decisions that have led me to make some good and bad decisions. On the bright side one of the good quick decisions that was made is the decision to pursue my master’s program. While reading the book it made me think on how the master’s program is structure and how I handle the stress over the course of these past two years. Throughout my master’s program the concepts and decision-making came across many times when test taking was in place. During some of the tests I started to think when I answered and filled in the bubbles in the scantron. I second-guessed many of the options I selected. Was the answer the correct one? Ideas and conflicting decisions were made during the test. That is what Gladwell talked about throughout the book and how we tend to second think ourselves. What I learned is to always go with that gut feeling and that is the main reason why Blink was a good though provoking book that I enjoyed.
About the Autor
Malcolm Gladwell was born in England and moved to the United States for college. He obtained his degree relatively quickly and began his career by the age of twenty. He was considered a failure in the journalism world up until 1996 when he landed a job with the New Yorker. Obtaining a job there with this big journalism firm is considered a step up in the journalism profession. While working for the New Yorker is when he started his writing career and ultimately his book series, which is quick in the journalism world. It is important to point out his background experience because it will guide us as to where his books are coming from. One of the main things he believes in is not everything is based on intelligence he wants to know what intelligence is and what drives our decisions into making them. This thought process leads to the foundation to many of his books. When he wrote the book Blink, he is exploring the nature of our unconscious thinking and that in that split second you have to decide what needs to be done.
127 our experts are availableright now
A decision that needs to be made whether it is a life or death decision and/or a decision at work that will cost the company millions of dollars. Those decision are made constantly, and we are not aware this is happening. Malcolm Gladwell states that our unconscious filters many useless information out from meaningful material, which our brain needs to clarify all the information in a way that becomes clear to us. “To demonstrate that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately; to help decide when we should and shouldn’t trust our instincts; and to show that snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.’ (Morris, 2005) We rely on this process to make decisions that leads to our problem-solving process. We as human beings always want more information to solve our problems that we cannot comprehend. Gladwell believes that if our unconscious is trained properly you do not need all the information and/or all the analytics.
The thought process and the way we think has been a process that has been drilled in our master’s program and our daily life to make those decisions. It has been planted in our brains that we need more analysis and more information to guide us to the path that we need to be in to insure us that we have the correct information. One very good example of this is speaking to a professional that are experts in their field and you ask them a question and the person is unsure of the response. It is probably accurate to say that the answer they are providing is accurate based on their knowledge and that gut feeling. “Blink explains what happens when you listen to your gut feeling, why these snap judgments are often much more efficient than conscious deliberating, and how to avoid your intuition leading you to wrong assumptions.” (Gladwell, 2005, p156)
If our unconscious is not trained properly you will generate poor decisions. These decisions are made when you are under stress and your unconscious is not to your benefit at all. We tend to make rapid decision to get the task off our plate and keep concentrating on what is important. It is then that you realize that a snap judgment of the decision is bad. Take for instance if you are under stress trying to write a report that is needed for your boss or for school and need to turn it in the morning. You know you are in a diet and are exercising regularly. Your unconscious will trick you into making rapid decisions such as eating a donut or candy bar that will lead you to break your diet. A poor decision that will not benefiting you at all. The thought of how we quickly jump to a decision without thinking. Gladwell states on the book these decisions is what takes us to the road to those decisions that are made abruptly. Which lead us to one of the terms Gladwell talks about which is thin slicing.
Blink the Book
The term of thin slicing refers to making quick interpretations about the problem and/or omitting details of the person or situation with little to no information. The main central point of the book is how we view the world we live in, and how thin slicing our own rapid understandings to many situations. Gladwell suggest that if we can do that, we can be better and more helpful to decision making versus the long and pointless detailed analysis of any situation. Which then leads to our rapid understanding that can lead us into wrong situations. “What thin slice methodology does refer to is observing a small selection of an interaction, usually less than 5 minutes, and being able to accurately draw to conclusions in the emotions and attitudes of the people interacting.” (Morris, 2005) Gladwell describes how we have an internal massive computer.
An internal computer, which guides us and lets us know when we should intentionally dive into the decisions that we make and how our internal emotion will decide for us. Finally our internal emotion is responsible in the choices for our final thoughts. The reading made me realize how we humans operate with fast thoughts. A process in which the person thinks about the situation and the process is faster than we realize it. In summary the book’s principle idea states this method of thinking operates quite mysteriously in comparison to our commonly used careful, planned, and thoughtful decision-making. A concept where Gladwell researches and analyses the cognitions in all of us and introduces it in the book along with many other concepts that are dependent with rapid cognition.
Dependencies to rapid cognition according to Gladwell are attitude, judgments, snap decisions, role of time, frugality of information, and role of past experiences in perception. He has an unusual way of using his analysis to use the examples and terms that we can relate to. Such examples are why do we fall in love with a particular image of the person we want that appeals to our eyes (i.e. tall, blond, sleek). Gladwell mentioned in the book that researched was done to couples by studying them for fifteen minutes or less their interaction with each other. Results showed 90-95% accuracy whether the couple would be together for a long time. Researched was done by observing the emotions, and language spoken between the couples. The signals researcher saw were made by the couples unconscious and the partner would not necessarily pick up. They would not pick the cues because they blinded by their every continuous interaction. They would pick up the unconscious cues if they spent hours researching themselves. The amount of information used which was rather extensive paved the way for Gladwell. He wanted to use this information in the book to let us know how we do not use our unconscious thought as heavily as we need to. I believe he used this method to explain to us the reader a simple way to understand and connect with the message Gladwell used.
I was able to understand the message Gladwell used to make us understand as to why relationships fail or rather what are the indicators as to why a perfect couple can make the relationship go into a downfall. To me and many other readers this is a part of your life we want answers. As he exposes the horrors of why love fails, we, as human beings we do not realize that we are the only ones to blame because of our unintentionally non-verbal signals we give. It is a perception of who we really are and not the person we are trying to hide.
We perceive to be the person who agrees to the task or invitation, but in reality, we do not want to be part of. As stated, before Gladwell presents to the readers the concepts of thin slicing: making a judgment of the whole scenario from just an assumption. He provides many examples of thin slicing in correlation to speed dating, tennis, and gambling to name a few. The argument is how the unconscious thought overpowers a logically thought decision and proves beneficial. Gladwell explains that when we are thin slicing or making snap judgments, our unconscious is who is making those decisions for us, even before our conscious starts working on that information. Hence, the title “the power of thinking without thinking.”
Unwillingly our attitude is the main corruptor when making snap judgments and decisions in our daily lives. Our brain has the ability to come to fast conclusions. Gladwell notes we have evolved for the sake of survival and our functioning occurs without us having to consciously think. We move back forth between conscious and unconscious models of thought. Our brains are operated so that we work with the two sides of the brain. One side has to be deliberated over ideas or thoughts and analyze the other that arranges those ideas and thoughts and asks questions later.
Gladwell gives an example on positive ways to use your unconscious. Professor gives students five word sets and makes them walk into a room and tells them to make sentences. The words given to them are worried, Florida, old, silently, observes, lonely, gray, forgetful, bingo, and wrinkle all these words are associated to being old. Two separate groups were done: one that were prime with the words and the second group were not. The sentence task is irrelevant what the experiment is interesting is how fast or slow students leave the experiment relative to how fast or slow they came in. When the students that walked out of the room group two walked slower than group one because of their unconscious picking up words that meant old. An example of negative unconscious is President Warren Harding. Despite his shortcomings he was continuously pushed up the political ladder based only on his looks. He looked like a leader and acted like one. Unfortunately President Warren Harding is considered one of the worst presidents in American history.
In my opinion that is how many presidents are elected and given the proper stage to be one. That is what is happening now with our current democratic elections in which there are too many to select and eventually only one gets picked based solely on who can have the look to be presidential. This is the dark and unfortunate side of thin slicing. Though thin slicing can be helpful it must also be acknowledged that it is not foolproof. Thin slicing is at the root of most prejudice and discrimination.
Our unconscious mind can relate to prejudices and these thoughts are in the back of our minds. In order to take rapid cognition seriously, we need to accept the fact that in some situations, rapid cognition leads us away from the correct path or direction. As Gladwell states in the book that research has shown that our unconscious/implicit associations influence our beliefs and behavior. Which Gladwell talks about in The Implicit Association Test (IAT). A topic is given such as race and the categories given are African American and European American. They will have good and bad descriptive words. The researchers will put European American good in one topic group and African American in bad topic group.
A set of words are given and you have to place them in each category. People do that pretty quickly then they are switched where European American is bad in one topic group and African American in good topic group. In the second set people are statistically slower outing words in these categories. More than 80% of those tested have pro-white associations. Malcolm Gladwell took this test thinking he could beat but unfortunately couldn’t. He is half black and he was shocked on the results that were given to him. The results that were given to him were the unconscious working in him it is like having two people inside you.
Even the most complex situations can be read quickly if we can identify the underlying pattern. Gladwell deeply elaborates why and where can our mindreading abilities fail. We read peoples facial expressions to see what their intentions are. Once we get to a point where we are in enough stress that our heart beat increases we tend to loose the ability to read peoples facial expressions and know what their intentions are. For example when an individual tries to steal our wallet and you are stressed you can’t tell what they are thinking you just see the person as an object. That is the same as Gladwell puts it with weapon focus that attention and memory is affected by emotion a life threating situations. Such as policemen get into a confrontation with the subjects actions happen that is unexplainable brought by stress of a situation. The officer is unable to hear that the gun going off or watching bullets hit someone as if in were in slow motion. Attention narrows to allow an assessment of the threat. It is unexplainable to the officer, person; to the subject it just happens it is a different person inside you. This is how we been in our environment and how we been prime with our unconscious. You can’t consciously tell your unconscious what to do. It is in those moments when your unconscious fully takes over and ultimately that is what ends up happening.
Blink Impact on the Business World
We use tactics and ideas from Blink on our everyday work. One very important topic is interviews. Human resources and trainers make up their minds about the people they meet on first impressions. Such as Gladwell states, “ The decisions may occur much faster, think instantaneously or in two seconds. Whenever people have to make sense of complicated situations or deal with lots of information quickly they bring to be all of their sudden beliefs, attitudes, values, experiences, education, and more on the situation.” When picking a candidate for the job it is difficult and why sometimes, very mediocre people end up in positions of enormous responsibility. Human resources will make snap judgments on the person they are interviewing with and may make a big sudden impression on you. Although ultimately the perception how they perform and do well in the job will not be as expected. It is difficult to select the right candidate for the position but when making quick and sudden decisions that is where the problems will occur. Having an organizational fit, or not, is analyzed several different ways.
Marketing uses tactics mentioned in the book Blink often. The tactic that they use frequently is priming the customer when selling of a good or service. Marketing is used for priming words to customers to make them purchase your product or service without them even thinking about it. The question here lies is this ethical? Another business example is Coca-Cola. When they decided to launch new coke. They decided to follow the same approach that Pepsi did. Coco-Cola was the dominant of the two. Pepsi launched sip challenge where they aired commercials of loyal coke drinkers were asked to sip from two unmarked containers and indicated which they preferred. More than 50% of the tasters chose Pepsi. Coca-Cola came up with the idea that they were going to produce a better tasting and quality coke and beat the taste test. They found one strategy that would beat the Pepsi taste test and launched the product along with the commercial.
It ended up that it was a complete failure. Why? No customer liked drinking the new coke. This was just a taste test flawed system that people did not like. During sip tests people only got to sip a drink and not completely finish the product. Which in the Pepsi commercial they in fact finished the product. Many loyal brand customers hated this new product and protest were done to bring back the original formula. Coca-Cola were forced to go back to the original few months later. A good business example is that our unconscious is good and in a split-second change. It can change when you are consciously drinking it and enjoying the product. Coca Cola completely ignored the strong association that people had with their product and their packaging. The important message and take away is when launching out a new product it is important to take into consideration the importance of how your customers taste and view your product.
Kenna is another example of not staying in touch with customers. Kenna was an extremely talented pop artist. All of the experts loved his music that he was producing. Experts stated that he was immensely talented and would be a huge success. When market survey went out none of customers liked it. Gladwell states that sometimes it is better not to trust the experts especially in business where the experts are only a small fraction of the mass market. These so called experts may not even take interest in the product you are launching. The experts and customers are two different segments and their unconsciousness are not alike. Finally Gladwell main points brings up how intuitive decision-making has been disvalued in our western culture in favor of more information. There are times that you should trust your rapid cognition or gut feeling. Trust others but continually improve the environment we live in. Try to get rid of all bias and to rely on our unconscious brain.
Life Lessons
The main takeaway from the book is to trust that gut feeling on a project or task you have been given by management. Projects given to you are for a reason and that is that management sees talent in you. Experts may be paid to give thoughts or impressions on movie or artists, but they are not always right. It goes hand in hand with the mass market research. Experts are going to hate a movie and we as customers may love it or vice versa. It is vital to the organization to separate what experts think and what the mass-market wants. Movie rating are a great example of this. I tend to unconsciously go by what critics and networks say about a certain movie I want to see. I tend to go and only mostly see what critics say are good instead of going to see what I like. Someone else’s opinion should not reflect what my views will be. It is a norm that usually new or different are often thought as bad but not how it really is.
As well as in work as I am pursuing a masters degree I hope to move up to a management position and use the knowledge from this book to practice. One keynote that I will use is not to stereotype a person by their looks and/or their ethnicity. I tend to fall into that category that although I am not racist we tend to stereotype each individual by predetermine thoughts or ideas. The notion that we act upon our unconscious really bothered me. I tend to not listen or pay attention to the individual or how well qualified he or she is but by how I feel towards them. That feeling I have is implanted into my brain that is driven by past experiences. I know I will definitely work on that individually and not fall into the trap. In my personal life I am very expressive and that has gotten me into trouble with many relationships such as with friends or partners in life. My facial expressions say more than I think and that is something that needs to be worked on.
Conclusion
Blink was a book I enjoyed and gave me an understanding on how our brain works. We are the deciding factor on the road we want to take and it is in that split second that those decisions will impact our life. With this book in mind we have to be a critical thinkers in our lives. It is important to not make snap judgments because these are often more accurate than our thought-out ones, but they can also be a result of a subconscious racial, socioeconomic, or appearance-based bias. As important as it is to trust our intuition, it’s also important to question it.
References
- Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963-. (2005). Blink : the power of thinking without thinking. New York :Little, Brown and Co.
- Morris, E. (2005, January). Blink by Malcolm Gladwell – Interview | BookPage. Retrieved June 21, 2019, from https://bookpage.com/interviews/8284-malcolm-gladwell-arts-culture#.XRLpdC2ZOi4
