Gladwell's Blink Gives the Reader Plenty to Think About

"Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell is interesting and well written. I recommend "Blink" above "Tipping Point," also by Gladwell. The premise of "Blink" is how we make split-second decisions, and are these decisions as satisfying as researched and thought-out decisions.

Gladwell has a breezy writing style that makes even the most dry academic research interesting and a smooth read. "Blink" was a book that I kept finding myself refer to in conversations sharing bits and pieces with friends. Gladwell's idea to explore rapid cognition and discuss it in a slow, deliberate manner turned into a really interesting book. We make split-second decisions everyday in deciding whether we like someone, whether we want to buy a book, whether someone is a good professor and more. In that moment, our subconscious is assimilating all kinds of information, some that can be identified and some that may be so subtle that it can't be identified. However, the idea that the subconscious is running an in-depth analysis supports Gladwell's premise that rapid cognition can be improved.

"Blink" opens with an illustrative story about the Getty Museum preparing for a $10 million purchase of an ancient statue, the Kouros. A Kouros is a Greek statue of a nude man created before the fifth century, B.C. The museum had hired a stable of experts to research the documentation and study the statue. All of the experts verified the statue as authentic. Interestingly, a few other experts went to see the Kouros prior to the museum signing on the $10 million line. As in art tradition, the cloth was pulled from the statue and, quite literally, in the blink of an eye ancient art experts knew the statue was a forgery.

Of course, after more research following these experts' gut reaction it turns out the statue was a forgery and the museum was saved from a costly mistake. The book builds on this idea: How did the experts who made a decision in a moment come up with the right conclusion while the experts who dotted every "i" drew the wrong conclusion.