The book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell explores the various aspects of an individual’s unconscious thinking made in the blink of an eye. This non-fiction book expertly weaves in the science of human nature and psychology through a series of anecdotes. It explores how there is more to our initial instincts than we think. Maybe, we should trust intuition more than our thought-out logic.
In this book, Gladwell introduces the concept of “thin-slicing,” which “... refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviors based on very narrow slices of experiences” (11, Gladwell). In one experiment, college students were asked to fill out a personality questionnaire and each of their friends was asked to fill out the same form about the students. Additionally, a group of strangers also filled out the questionnaire on the students, except that they could not meet the students and could only spend half an hour in each of the student’s dorm rooms. Turns out, the strangers’ answers were more accurate in knowing the students’ personalities rather than their friends of many years. Through this example, Gladwell proves his theory of thin-slicing and how much more knowledge you can obtain with little information. Through this and other true stories in medicine, music, relationships, and more, Gladwell explains this theory of how thin-slicing comes from our brain’s ability to process information rapidly and accurately. However, our snap judgments may not always be precise and can still be subject to our prejudices or biases unconsciously. Still, trusting it or not could, for example, be the deciding factor, for example, between failing or passing an exam. This book will make you realize that “...truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking” (66, Gladwell).
One thing I was fond of about this book was that it was very detailed on the various ways the human brain functions. Although it did take a lot of focus at times to process the information, it was entertaining. However, I appreciated how this book doesn’t necessarily require you to have any prior knowledge of psychology and describes concepts in a simple way to understand. It was quite engaging to read the statistics and experiments that support Gladwell’s claim of trusting thin-slicing and have actual proof behind it. From this point on, I will consider more about maintaining a balance between trusting my conscious thinking and trusting my unconscious thinking.
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