: For Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling The Tipping Point explores the extraordinarily perceptive and deceptive power of the sub-conscious mind. Gladwell’s major claim is that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as a decision made cautiously and deliberately. What we are actually doing is what Gladwell calls ‘thin-slicing’. When we leap to a decision or have a hunch our unconscious is sifting through the situation in front of us looking for a pattern, throwing out the irrelevant information and zeroing in on what really matters. Our unconscious mind is so good at this that it often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and protracted ways of thinking. Much of this is utterly mysterious but some of the most astonishing and useful examples of thin-slicing can be learned.
Gladwell hopes to convince us that our snap judgements and first impressions
can be educated and controlled so instead of merely praising the mysterious
process of instinct and intuition he is interested in those moments when our
instincts betray us, the situations where our powers of rapid cognition can go
awry, where we fail to read the signs. Most disturbing of all is the degree to
which culturally determined preconceptions and prejudices control us. Without
reducing matters to racism and sexism Gladwell shows us that there are facts
about people’s appearance—their size or shape or color or sex—that can trigger a
very similar set of powerful associations which explains why utter mediocrities
(such as U.S. President Warren Harding) can sometimes end up in positions of
enormous responsibility; or why tall people earn substantially more than their
shorter colleagues; or why car salesmen unconsciously charge prices according to
race and gender.
Gladwell’s conversational prose style is concise, informative, accessible and
entertaining. The stories, scientific findings and psychological tests are
consistently surprising whether he is dealing with speed-dating, record
promotions, police shoot-outs, the human face, or the reasons doctors get sued.
--Larry Brown - This text refers to the hardcover
edition.
Synopsis
Intuition is not some magical property
that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. It is a product of long hours
and intelligent design, of meaningful work environments and particular rules and
principles. This book shows us how we can hone our instinctive ability to know
in an instant, helping us to bring out the best in our thinking and become
better decision-makers in our homes, offices and in everyday life. Just as he
did with his revolutionary theory of the tipping point, Gladwell reveals how the
power of blink' could fundamentally transform our relationships, the way we
consume, create and communicate, how we run our businesses and even our
societies.You'll never think about thinking in the same way again.
