Malcolm Gladwell's latest offering "Blink" is a book about what happens in the first two seconds when you face a new situation or meet a new person.
Literally in "the blink of an eye", oftentimes, we just "get a feeling" about an encounter with someone or something new. And as Gladwell tells us, those instincts should not necessarily be dismissed. On the contrary, he says, sometimes we understand more about something in a single glance than we might if we spent months studying it.
As the author writes, there are 2 ways the human brain makes sense of a new situation. One is of course, consciously and logically. We think about what we've learned in the past, in other situations and come up with an idea of what to expect, or a conclusion of sorts. It's a slower process and requires information.
The other way is much faster…it uses what psychologists call "the adaptive unconscious" and allows us to make very quick judgments based on very little information. It's spontaneous, and has a lot to do with our personality. It's this second type of thinking that "Blink" focuses on.
What makes this book gripping is that Gladwell offers up a range of familiar scenarios where snap judgments, or what he calls rapid cognition, come into play in our everyday lives. For instance when you walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or interview someone for a job, you might have a rush of quick insight that you can't quite put your finger on.
Ever tried to explain to a friend why someone just doesn't seem trustworthy, and find it hard to articulate? Instead of just chalking it up to a "hunch" which belittles that instinct, it is sometimes worthwhile to try and deconstruct what makes us feel the way we do.
Gladwell says "there are moments, particularly in times of stress…when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world. So though it may sound like psychobabble at first to you, the book turns out to be both fun and substantial. "Blink" celebrates the power of the glance, something you probably haven't thought about before.
The author gives an almost amazing anecdote about a psychologist at the University of Washington who can observe a married couple talking about the most mundane things for an hour, and with just that information, predict whether with 95% accuracy, whether they will still be married 15 years later.
Of course, the expert uses painstaking scientific methods to decide whether a couple will stay together or split, but Gladwell argues that we all do something similar in our daily lives.
We rely on a little bit of information to make sense of something quickly. Basketball players do it when they take in and comprehend everything that's going on around them.
A museum curator takes a look at a piece of artwork and can instantly tell that it's a fake. In the military, generals have to see and make sense of the battlefield quickly. So it shouldn't be surprising to you that you too, have the ability to do this, and probably have done so, recently.
Now that's not to say that Gladwell is so busy singing the praises of our intuitive abilities, that he thinks we should throw all caution to the wind and solely rely on our gut feelings from now on.
He certainly gives examples of how snap judgments can be negative. For instance, he tells a story about how a group of police officers made a tragic and terrible mistake in New York City in the late 1990s.
They were patrolling a low-income neighborhood late one night, when they passed a young man - clearly an immigrant - who was standing on the steps of his apartment, getting some air. Mistaking him for a robber, they called out to him as they stepped out of their car to question him.
The man, thinking that the 4 policeman were about to rob him, was terrified himself and frantically tried to find his keys in his pocket to run back into his building.
The police officers mistook this action to mean that the man had a weapon. They all ended up shooting at him and the man died.
Gladwell gives this story as an example of how failures or mistakes in rapid cognition can occur, with terrible consequences. In this case, the police made a series of critical misjudgments in the span of far less than a minute - in fact, just 7 seconds - resulting in the tragedy.
This is the dark side of rapid cognition. Many times, our snap judgments have a lot to do with our inner biases and prejudice, ones we might not even be aware of.
The author himself says he got the idea for this book when he grew his hair long a few years ago. He says that within months, he noticed that his life had changed in very small but significant ways.
He started getting speeding tickets all the time-when he had never gotten any before. He started getting pulled out of airport security lines for special attention.
He was even considered a suspect in a criminal case - just because of his longer-than-average hair! He realized how subtle and absurd first impressions can be - in this case, over something as seemingly trivial as hair length, and started thinking about the power of these first impressions.
Gladwell warns us that we must accept that there are times when these judgments can lead us astray. Nevertheless, he believes that in the task of making sense of ourselves and our behavior, there can be as much value in the blink of an eye, as there is in months of rational analysis.
If we are able to recognize this, and balance our deliberate AND instinctive thinking, we can be truly successful decision makers.
Unlike Gladwell's previous book, "The Tipping Point", which was concerned with the grand themes of how social change happens, "Blink"
is quite different.
It is concerned with the smallest components of our everyday lives--with the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that bubble up whenever we have to make a decision under conditions of stress.
Gladwell thinks it's time we paid more attention to those fleeting moments.
He truly believes that if we did, it would change the way wars are fought, the kind of products we see on the shelves, the kinds of movies that get made, the way police officers are trained, the way couples are counseled, and on and on.
We all care about being good decision-makers. So the next time you make a decision, you might want to take Malcolm Gladwell's advice: don't think, blink!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Malcolm Gladwell is a former business and science writer at the Washington Post.
He is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker. In his landmark bestseller 'The Tipping Point', he redefined how we understand the world around us.
He was born in 1963 in England, and grew up in Canada. He graduated with a degree in history from the University of Toronto in 1984.
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:
The premise of this facile piece of pop sociology has built-in appeal: little changes can have big effects; when small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world. - Publisher's Weekly |
Nina is a Producer with Channel NewsAsia.
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