Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

 Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

 

This book is a happy confirmation of an acquired (I hope) taste for good psychology books. It started with 50 psychology classics, continued with Victor Frankl’s Man’s search for Meaning and now with Blink.

This is an extraordinary book, which explains how many facts our mind can process in the Blink of an eye. We are taken from the Getty Museum to the shooting of Diallo, from the election of Harding to the discovery of Tom Hanks.

 

In the Blink of an eye, experts were able to tell that a statue was false. In a test, based on Thin Slicing, participants were able to evaluate teachers in Seconds, with the same ratings given to them by those who took classes for a semester.  The reader finds out about an expert who can tell if couples will divorce, with a 90% accuracy rate, after listening to their conversation for a few minutes! Based on such elements as contempt, stonewalling, defensiveness…There is the case of the fireman who took his team out of a death trap, after another BLINK decision. Then studies refer to the basketball players who take decisions in a fraction of a second.

There is the dark side of decisions taken in seconds, on the basis of appearance. William Harding was elected as president of The US, based on his very handsome looks, tall figure and very pleasant voice. He turned out to be one of the worst presidents and now there is talk of the “Harding effect”.

Malcolm Gladwell researched the Fortune 500 companies and found the Harding Effect there: most of the CEOs of these top companies are not only male and white, but 6 feet tall. Way above the average height.