"Blink" Or You'll Miss It

 

Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” left me a little perplexed. As in he made some good points, and some other points didn’t seem to add up. I call these kinds of books “think about it” kind of books. They are more commonly referred to as pop psychology, which makes sense. Gladwell himself is a figure who divides people in the writer, reader and psychology community. Some people praise Gladwell for his storytelling skills to prove a point someone might have not thought about before. Others say he cherry picks his research. Either way, Gladwell has sold millions of copies of his books, which include other popular titles like “The Tipping Point”.

I was a little divided reading this book myself. On one hand, Gladwell’s stories are interesting. He opens the book with a story about a museum buying an art piece, but quickly the museum’s hopes are dashed when experts who are invited to look at the piece find it might be a fake. Gladwell askes the question, how did the experts know the piece was a fake, but the people who ran the museum does not pick up on this. There are clues about the way the statue they bought, thinking it was from ancient Greek times, but not so. Little clues like the way the feet and hands of the statue is pointed.

This goes into the theory Gladwell has about how certain people know something, and some people don’t seem to know the same thing. He presents this as the main topic of the book, the ability to know something better even with limited information presented to the person. He calls this theory thin slicing.

Gladwell is a talented writer and uses telling a lot of different types of stories to sustain his theories about how people think and act based on limited information. He tells stories about science, medicine, war games, and even a story about an office chair which at first wasn’t a hit but became one later. He references everything from the cola wars between Pepsi and Coke to studies about people with autism.

I was surprised the book was called “Blink” because he doesn’t use the word blink a lot throughout the book. However, I suppose it’s a more marketable title than “Thin Slicing”, which is the theory this book is about.

At point, Gladwell writes a chapter on speed dating and a professor studying couples who stay together and couples who get a divorce. None of this is that exciting, as the topics Gladwell picks aren’t exactly the most extreme topics. A lot of slices of life topics, but there are some topics in this book that are beyond that. At one point, he talks about a police shooting in the Bronx where an innocent immigrant was shot. I do agree with him that simple racism or police reacting too fast is hardly ever the cause of these types of situations. They are usually more complicated than that.

However, when Gladwell goes into the topic of autism, and declares everyone is temporarily has autism in certain situations, I wasn’t too sure about that. I’m not an expert on the topic, but that conclusion sounded odd. I’ve read other authors like Gladwell in the past who try to mix pop culture, stories and psychology. Usually, these books make arguments of which some are rational, and some are not. This book has the same problems as other books in this regard. However, it’s an interesting read, and I think it was worth reading Gladwell’s interesting ideas.