Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell - Book Report/Review Example

Book Review Essay Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005. 277 pp. Malcolm Gladwell asserts that human beings engage in two different lines of attack during the process of making a decision. The first strategy is to consciously consider what one has learned about the subject and then based the decision upon answers to a series of weighted questions. The second strategy is an unconscious one in which a decision is reached very quickly and usually without any awareness that a decision was even made. The second type are more popularly referred to as either gut decisions or hunches and it is the expansion and dependability of them that Malcolm Gladwell addresses in his book Blink. Gladwell sets his book up to ask why some people seem able to consistently make excellent decisions, why some people seem to have a knack for making instinctual choices, and why are some the best decisions often the most difficult to explain. Blink is directed specifically to what the most successful corporate managers do every day: making decisions. Gladwell recognizes that unconscious decisions very often prove superior to those made after weighty consideration based on reasonable expectations. This decision-making process is not normally how executives arrive at a choice that affects employees, shareholders and customers. In fact, even the most enterprising executives tend to rely on factual studies and analysis before making any decision. Blink is concerned with those decisions made in the moment. The problem is that because the system that creates these gut decisions is such a mystery some people have instinctively distrustful of relying upon them. To lend such instinctive choices more integrity, Gladwell implies that the brain relies upon a method called "thin slicing" which is essentially the capacity the human unconscious to discover design in circumstances and conduct establish on very fine serving of familiarity. Thin slicing creates a process through any extraneous information in a given circumstance is eschewed; it is also a process that takes place without conscious understanding or motivation. There are no rational filters involved in thin slicing and it evolves as people move from one particular situation to another. Gladwell impart two particularly interesting examples of how thin slicing works. The J. Paul Getty Museum was extended the prospect of purchasing a sixth-century BC marble statue called a kouros. The museum curators finally determined the authenticity of the statue following a year-long scientific analysis, only to suddenly imply that despite all the evidence there was simply something wrong about the "look" of the statue. This gut level instinct proved correct in the end; though no adequate explanation was ever offered as to how they knew something was wrong about the statue. One expert asserted that he actually got physically sick just looking at the statute; another reported experiencing the strange sensation of there being an invisible obstacle between himself and the statue. Although they all sensed intuitively that something was amiss, none could explain rationally what that something was. They knew the statue wasn't authentic, but they couldn't explain exactly how they knew it. Sure enough, the snap judgments of the experts were right, though they struggled to explain just how they knew. The second example of thin slicing revolves around the process of college student evaluations of their professors. The finding concluded that students gave the same evaluation based on a ten minute video of the professor as they would having sat through an entire term. Blink also deals substantially with topics related to organizational behavior, illustrating his case by using what Gladwell refers to as the "Warren Harding error" which has an affinity with the better-known halo effect. The halo effect is in reference to one's necessity to remake impressions of people by overlooking attributes that are not consistent with the existing impression (O'Shaughnessy, and O'Shaughnessy 239). Gladwell uses Warren Harding as an example of this because his physical appearance was inspiring and he possessed a charm that soothed the worries of many. As a result, Harding rose up the political ladder based predominantly upon the fact that he looked and acted like a President, but those who believed so overlooked the unfortunate fact that he did not possess many of those qualities that are necessary to make a good President. Gladwell stakes his claim that thin slicing serves to create biases in one's subconscious, resulting in the most dangerous kind of discrimination: unconscious stereotyping. Gladwell polled half of the Fortune 500 companies and discovered an interesting thing; the average of a CEO is a few inches above the average height of the general population. Very few members on a company's Board of Directors would admit to possessing a bias toward taller than average males, but the facts contradict the possibility of mere chance that so many CEOs are taller than average. Gladwell argues that this it he type of bias that humans act on them without conscious comprehension; it is a decision based upon a misconception that still persists regarding the idea that all member of a certain group possess comparable traits and behaviors. Gladwell's research implies that people who hire for positions of leadership may subconsciously and incorrectly correlate a relationship between height and success. The central thesis of Gladwell's book is that it is all those very small snap judgments that everyone makes a thousand times a day that eventually prove to have a bigger effect on the future than the big decisions that people pore and fret over. One very simple example of this is the idea of first impressions. Most people very quickly come to an impression upon meeting a new person, a new product or even a new concept; very often this decision is made literally in the blink of an eye. Gladwell maintain that human beings are trained to glean information in a matter of seconds from the introduction of a person or product and filter out the information considered less useful. Gladwell calls this process rapid cognition. The method of rapid cognition is such an ingrained element of existence that rarely take time to acknowledge it despite the fact that many pour an exponential amount of effort into making conscious decisions on less important matters. If managers are to situate Gladwell's theoretical ideas into real-world situations it will require top-down decision making. Gladwell successfully intuits that for people to be able to make gut level decisions on the fly, they will have also to possess a necessary level of information. People must be trained to understand what exactly gives them the impetus for making a blink decision. Once employees are trained in the ability to understand and properly work with this information, it falls to the managerial staff to execute empowerment among the workers before they will adequately feel comfortable making decisions based on instincts. While a number of managers will certainly be less than enthusiastic about the prospect of giving up their control in the decision-making process to underling, the upside is that it may well serve to create a much more economical and efficient working atmosphere. Gladwell offers an anecdotal basis for this theory when he introduces the account of Paul Van Riper, a lieutenant who commonly imposed training and empowerment while heading a platoon fighting during the Vietnam War. Van Riper judged that this system was absolutely vital; that providing a basis where his soldiers could react instinctively created a much more efficient environment. One example that Van Riper offers deals with putting his unit through exhaustive training on days between missions. The key element for Van Riper was that there would be no opportunity for second-guessing or belaboring over decisions; the point was to create a unit that resolved problems quickly. He wanted the men to feel free to think for themselves. The problem with Gladwell's approach may be that it is too academic and looks for profound answers when simpler ones would do better. One problem that is immediately apparent is that Gladwell considers instinctive decision-making to be a grand scheme that encompasses everything from a simple gut feeling to unconscious bias engendered by cultural responses. As a result, the evidence that Gladwell often offers is anecdotal at best and falsely analogous at worst. Consider, for example, another buzzword of the type that Gladwell seems so particularly fond of coining: mindblindness. Two examples of mindblindness couldn't be farther from each other yet-the need to make snap judgments during moments of emergency response and autism-yet Gladwell considers them both to be examples of mindblindness. As for the idea of thin slicing, Gladwell imbues with a prodigious amount of ponderous importance, yet when it comes down it, the very case he uses best to make his case doesn't seem to fit. According to Gladwell, thin slicing is supposed to take place using very narrowly defined information, yet in the case of the art historians who were convinced the statue was a fake, there was nothing thin about the slice. There was something indefinable about the entire statue as a whole that seems off-kilter. Gladwell also offers very little evidence or even interest in the neurological explanation behind this phenomena. The story of the art expert's nausea whenever he looked at the fake statue is fascinating, but what caused such a physical manifestation (Sylwester). Gladwell observes that one's body very often begins a response even before the brain makes sense of the input, using examples like gamblers sweating before they are aware they just laid down a bet of higher risk than they considered (Shapiro) It would seem as though there must be some kind of scientific study into this phenomena, but Gladwell ignores it entirely. One of the central concerns of the book is the use of snap decisions during circumstances of life and death, exemplified by the highly publicized and controversial shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. The story as Gladwell retells it paints a portrait of police offers working essentially on a surge of adrenaline in the darkness. The police blindly shot at the unarmed man despite the possibility that Diallo's facial expressions, had they been visible as in daylight, would have clearly shown he was not a threat. Gladwell's suggestion is that the police officers who fired at Diallo were responding unconsciousness to constructed biases or possibly the natural engendered fear of a firearm pointed at them. What Gladwell seems to willfully ignore is the policemen's own explanation; that it was dark and they simply couldn't see well enough to determine if Diallo presented a threat or not. While Blink is extraordinarily well written and is packed with information on the idea of snap judgments and thinking without thinking, there is a definite sense that it lacks a strong application to the real world. The book begins strongly with the concept of breaking down the system that humans engage in when they begin to think instinctively, offering a collection of fascinating anecdotal examples on the effect of the subconscious under a variety of different stimuli and environmental adjustments. Unfortunately, the net effect of all this is left in a vacuum in which Gladwell never offers a satisfactory idea of how one could take his information and apply outside of theory. The book is geared toward higher level critical thinking of the type that a business executive would engage in, but any business manager facing a billion dollar decision would remain stultified and confused after reading the book. It is difficult to imagine any manager putting Blink down and turning with self-confidence toward his staff and explaining why he made a decision that flies in the face of all research to the contrary. Any manager using this book as a justification or defense for an outrageous gut-level decision would probably be facing severe consequences from his Board of Directors. In addition, much of the book is written in an inaccessible way that would cause many people to skip pages if not entirely toss it aside. One example is the section dealing with Paul Ekman's research on the human. While Ekman devoted years of his career to the development of a numerical system used to determine people's thoughts based on facial tics and contortions, Gladman's account is really far too complex for the average reader to comprehend, must less actually utilize in their daily decision-making process. While captivating in a theoretical sense, it ultimately fails to generate much interest because it is simply too detailed and abstruse. On the other hand, the section in which Gladwell writes about the development of unconscious biases is far more understandable and applicable to daily life. Gladwell employs statistics collected from an Implicit Association Test (IAT) called the Race IAT to support his claim. This test begins with a succession of questions that require the person taking it to expressing their opinions about various racial groups. The upshot is that the average person always begins by stating they are not particularly prejudiced or have any deep-seated racist feeling. The results of the test indicates otherwise, however. Most of those who take the test are far morel likely to connect affirmative characteristics with Caucasians, while linking negative characteristics with African Americans. Equally true, most test takers are more reluctant to associate negative personality traits with Caucasians and positive characteristics with African Americans. These biases, Gladwell asserts, get manifested not in direct ways but with more subtlety precisely because most people truly do believe they don't hold them. A white interviewer may give less time or speak down to an African American applicant, for example. One of the interesting parts about this section is exceptionally subtle ways that unconscious biases are displayed that most people would probably not even notice. Gladwell points to the concept that if someone doesn't laugh long at a joke it might not be so much that he doesn't find the joke funny, but rather that he is maintaining a deep-seated racial bias. Conversely, many of those against whom unconscious biases are directed are more intuitive and capable of recognizing the bias that eludes both other observers and the individual himself. Thus begins a path of antagonism in which the object of the bias, in recognizing the hidden signs, begins to behave toward the first person in negative ways, thereby strengthening the original bias through personal interaction. Gladwell asserts that correcting this kind of bias can only be done by having people interact more often with those against whom they are biased. While this idea certainly has value and it is easy to where Gladwell is going, in the working world it would probably be even more effective to simply institute a diversity program as a method for teaching managers how better to minimize the negative effects of their own interior biases. What Gladwell is suggesting is undeniably attractive and farsighted, but considering that even openly hostile racial prejudices have not been eliminated from the workplace, it seems highly unlikely that mere interaction between the opposition forces at work would have much hope for genuine and authentic progress. Undeniably, the single most useful aspect of Gladwell's research are those examples that he utilizes to prove his contentions, rather than the theoretical constructs of the contentions themselves. While one may have a hard time convincing someone of the more technical aspects that Gladwell researches, it is almost certain than when one is exposed to an illuminating example of these concepts that it will sink is more deeply. And this is a highly important subject for top level managers where racial bias can be incredibly counterproductive, not to mention the fact that it can potentially lead to very serious litigious consequences if any of Gladwell's theories could be used in a court of law to prove conscious racial biases. The problem that exists is the nature of these unconscious biases and how society helps to serve to normalize them into the daily debate. What seems a natural enough action freed from any prejudicial overtones can be highlights to indicate a hidden bias when juxtaposed with context. For this reason, Gladwell's suggestion of intermingling to discover the biases seems unlikely. If an executive has normalized a bias toward African-Americans because of he connects images of black skin to rap star thugs, it probably isn't going to help salve his concerns to find that most of his African-American employees listen to rap music. If anything, it will probably serve only to intensify his prejudice as a direct result of Gladwell's own thin slicing argument. An executive who otherwise is comfortable with his black employees may slice their love of rap away to compare it with the rapping thugs that served to further his bias in the first place. Malcolm Gladwell is a well-respected author and a very creative writer, and while Blink definitely contains much food for thought, as a tome written to enlightened the elite corporate executives of the world as to what goes on during the decision making process it leaves much to be desired. While the theories seem sound enough, one wishes Gladwell had given more time to neurological studies on the body's chemical reactions as they relate to the decision making process. It is reminiscent of the old Pepsi Challenge commercials in which most people preferred the taste of Pepsi when they took a few sips, while ignoring the research that most people preferred Coke after drinking an entire can (Cameron 6). By lumping all instinctual decisions together and avoiding the particular issues of context when it comes to gut-level decision, Gladwell seems to be hedging the bets in his own favor (Currie). There is much to admire in the book, but very little to suggest that it would be a necessary component in the boardrooms of American as a way to make them free of bias and to release managers from the overburdening of too much input data from which to make decisions that feel wrong at the level of instinct. Works Cited Cameron, Ben. "How to Pack the House." American Theatre Feb. 2005: 6. Currie, Edwina. "Basic Instinct." New Statesman 14 Feb. 2005: 51+. O'Shaughnessy, John, and Nicholas Jackson O'Shaughnessy. The Marketing Power of Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Shapiro, Kevin. "At a Glance." Commentary Mar. 2005: 74+. Sylwester, Robert. "Cognitive Neuroscience Discoveries and Educational Practices: Seven Areas of Brain Research That Will Shift the Current Behavioral Orientation of Teaching and Learning." School Administrator Dec. 2006: 32+ Read More