Product Description

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 Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-03
• Released on: 2007-04-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com
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

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Best-selling author Gladwell (The Tipping Point) has a dazzling ability to find commonality in disparate fields of study. As he displays again in this entertaining and illuminating look at how we make snap judgments—about people's intentions, the authenticity of a work of art, even military strategy—he can parse for general readers the intricacies of fascinating but little-known fields like professional food tasting (why does Coke taste different from Pepsi?). Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts—and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more. Perhaps the most stunning example he gives of this counterintuitive truth is the most expensive war game ever conducted by the Pentagon, in which a wily marine officer, playing "a rogue military commander" in the Persian Gulf and unencumbered by hierarchy, bureaucracy and too much technology, humiliated American forces whose chiefs were bogged down in matrixes, systems for decision making and information overload. But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge. If doctors are given an algorithm, or formula, in which only four facts are needed to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, is that really educating the doctor's decision-making ability—or is it taking the decision out of the doctor's hands altogether and handing it over to the algorithm? Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Gladwell, the author of 2000's The Tipping Point, reaches to create another popular intellectual phenomenon by overturning received wisdom about how we make decisions. As in his articles for The New Yorker, where he works as a staff writer, the anecdotes throughout Blink are lively and entertaining. But the sheer quantity of stories about everything from sip tasters for Coca-Cola and the Pepsi challenge to gut reactions to "fake" art overwhelms the main theme of the book; many critics feel Gladwell isn't entirely sure what his theme is. David Brooks of The New York Times Book Review sums up the critical consensus nicely: "If you want to trust my snap judgment, buy this book: you'll be delighted. If you want to trust my more reflective second judgment, buy it: you'll be delighted but frustrated, troubled and left wanting more."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

INTERESTING BUT NOT ESSENTIAL
Mr. Gladwell is very talented. He certainly did his homework on this one. At the end of the book though I was left wondering, "Okay...so what is the conclusion?" The book came to a rather abrupt ending and I couldn't tell if the author was for or against snap judgments.

My biggest disappointment is that there was no warning regarding explicit language. I was listening to this work on CD with my young daughters in the car when all of a sudden he starts using profane words in an effort to quote others. Was it necessary to include such language?

Not my favorite
Started out really liking it, but it suddenly started feeling suspiciously like a self-help book. I'm not crazy into that.

Our Hidden Programming


Malcolm Gladwell is a "gatekeeper." In his book, Blink, he opens the gate to a room of self-discovery - a room that allows the reader, perhaps for the first time, to realize that our actions and judgments often are not as "objective" as we might think. Mr. Gladwell, through a series of examples and stories, explains that we each have our own "programming" - dare I say "prejudices" - about how we (and the cultures we grow up in) judge and respond to things we "see" and "know to be true".

He also says there are other more benign, untainted impressions that come to us in the "blink" of an eye. About these untainted impressions he says: "We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility." Implicitly he suggests that we also don't realize how powerful our "programming" is to potentially override and taint those benign and fragile first impressions.

Mr. Gladwell provides examples of what some people have done to preserve their "blink" experiences and offset their "pre-programming" - a fun read - I recommend it.

As I was reading through the book, I was reminded of two other books (both of which I highly recommend) by Ariel and Shya Kane. In Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: A Book About Instantaneous Transformation and Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment, the authors include discussions of human mechanical behaviors - behaviors we absorb from our families and cultures at an early age. They point out that we are mostly unaware of these mechanics and until we become aware of them, they can influence and even "control" our behavior and life choices - very eye-opening and easy to read as well!

All three of these books are well worth reading - enjoy!