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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking |  | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
Buy New: $8.99
as of 9/8/2010 07:09 PDT details
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Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  1173 reviews
Sales Rank: 128
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0316010669
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.44
EAN: 9780316010665
ASIN: 0316010669
Publication Date: April 3, 2007
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Amazon.com Review
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff
Product Description
In his #1 bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. In BLINK, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. How do we make decisions--good and bad--and why are some people so much better at it than others? That's the question Malcolm Gladwell asks and answers in BLINK. Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, examining case studies as diverse as speed dating, pop music, and the New Coke, Gladwell shows how the difference between good decision making and bad has nothing to do with how much information we can process quickly, but rather with the few particular details on which we focus. BLINK displays all of the brilliance that has made Malcolm Gladwell's journalism so popular and his books such perennial bestsellers as it reveals how all of us can become better decision makers--in our homes, our offices, and in everyday life.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 1173
 Much better than The Tipping Point September 4, 2010
B. Srirangam (SF Bay Area, CA, USA)
I find it funny that people say this book is not as good as the Tipping Point. My opinion is the exact opposite. I found the Tipping Point laborious and smacking of pseudo-science. In comparison, Blink is a really good read and deals with science much better. Gladwell does have the gift of translating studies and research into a cogent narrative.
 Blink August 30, 2010
Las
This blink CD is not what I expected. I don't know if this type of CD is the only available CD or not. The main thing is this CD does not go according to the book. Therefore the purpose I bought the CD did not serve.
Not a Roadmap August 29, 2010
Jeffrey P. Wood
It seems like a lot of reviews have spent a lot of time bemoaning what "Blink" isn't. It isn't a self-help guide that will teach you "how to harness the power of thin slicing to win at business, cards, love, and the stock market" which it seems is what a lot of Americans are looking for. To me - it seems more like an examination of the fact that we've become so data driven in the workforce that we've lost some of the balance between informed decisions based on data and 'gut feel.' I would also say that Gladwell didn't lay out a map of "this is how you, too, can thin slice" because it would be different for each of us depending on background, experience, the purpose we wish to achieve, etc. etc. etc. Instead - it's a personal responsibility to think about the ways that you make decisions and ways that you may be overwhelming yourself with data rather than doing something that comes naturally.
Overall - I enjoyed the book for what it was and it made me spend time thinking about the different ways that I make decisions. I found the examples interesting - but maybe that's because I'm an Army officer that works in the medical field that has a car salesman for a father (all of these play a role in the book). It seems to wander a little at times and not all of the examples seem relevant to me, though.
Blink: The Power of Writing Without Writing. August 25, 2010
Mehmet Gok (Toronto, ON Canada)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Core idea: The Theory of Thin Slices - How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a LongWay
Thin slicing refers to the ability of the unconscious mind to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very thin slices of experiences. It is about the gut feeling you may have upon meeting someone, or that hunch you strongly feel when observing or learning something for the first time. It is through thin slicing that Dr. John Gottman can accurately predict how a marriage will likely turn out merely by observing a few minutes of a couple's conversation. According to Dr. Gottman, it is easy to spot a pattern in how a person talks or how a couple interacts. Although these small nuances are not explicit, they are there. And knowing how to look for them can give you hints on the outcome of a conversation, deal, friendship or partnership.
The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Decisions
Snap thoughts and decisions happen so quickly that you are sometimes not aware of them. In fact, some of these thoughts and decisions occur in your unconsciousness. When this happens, it takes some time for your conscious brain to realize the significance of the snap decisions. It is important to remember that snap thoughts and feelings bubble up from the unconscious. These fleeting thoughts and decisions rely on the thinnest slices of experience and take place behind locked doors . In other words, they take place beyond your consciousness and are often times difficult to explain.
It is no doubt an interesting book and Gladwell certainly delivers again. However, it lacks the completeness of "Tipping Point" starting after Warren Herding's story. The strong current under the writing fades away and the reader's interest is slowly lost. Maybe the book format was not the best choice for this topic. An article could have been most powerful. A la Blaise Pascal: "The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter." Thus, 4 stars.
This book makes you think--what's wrong with that? August 21, 2010
Eric Robert Morse
The description that something `makes you think' no longer means that something `fills your mind with novel thought,' but rather that something `makes you skeptical of established beliefs.' The new meaning is useful, but some things out there just fill you with inspirational and amazing thoughts and those valuable things are what should receive the description. Malcolm Gladwell's `Blink' is one of those valuable things.
This is ironic, of course, because the whole book is dedicated to turning off thinking--the author aims to "think without thinking." Gladwell says that we may be "better off without thinking," but what makes his book so fascinating is that it makes you wonder, speculate, and think.
He makes his case for `snap decisions' well by describing examples when `thinking too much' led to incorrect and sometimes expensive mistakes. The book's opening example of museum curators who tirelessly studied a potential acquisition with the finest carbon dating tools and latest scientific processes was compelling. The curators concluded that the acquisition was authentic and bought the piece for millions of dollars only to find out later that it was a fake. All of their `thinking' couldn't uncover the truth that (as it turned out) experts could easily pick out in the `blink of an eye.'
The moral (although not completely explained in the book) is that science, procedure, and thinking in general require `abstraction,' which is the process of reducing the whole truth into a smaller, more easily accessible truth. This allows us to expand our knowledge and hold on to it much longer than if we attempted to remember the whole truth. Since it is not the whole truth, the process of abstraction can distort or lose the truth altogether. As such, we would sometimes do better by scraping all our abstract knowledge and simply focusing on what we see in front of us. This is the central theme of `Blink.'
Of course, the fact remains that without abstraction we could not know as much or remember as long as we do, and most human advance would be lost. Abstraction is a tool that has been elemental in man's ascent and cannot be discarded as completely obstructive.
The author even proves this fact in his effort to diminish thinking. That is because many of his examples feature scientists' elaborate experiments aimed ascertaining the importance of simple, split-second judgment. Thinking is used to denigrate thinking.
Inconsistencies like this foil any attempt at producing a solid idea and in the end `Blink' becomes not more than a series of stories. Most of the stories are really fascinating and invigorating and it must be said that they are expertly written. It is for these stories that one should pick up the book. But, ultimately, the stories (all stories) are just examples taken out of context--they are abstractions and lead to the same kind of mistakes Gladwell is trying to abolish.
Read the book, but enjoy how much it makes you think and it will be worth it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 1173
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