Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Top positive review

Is there an ENCORE after the "Tipping Point"? - The answer is BLINK - A FABULOUS Book!!!!

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2007

If you wanted to sum up Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink", I would tell you to see the very first "Star Wars" movie. Remember in 1977 when Luke Skywalker while piloting his fighter hears Obi-Wan Kenobi tell him to turn off his radar while attacking the evil star ship? Obi-Wan wants Luke to rely on the FORCE. In other words, give up his conscious thought patterns and go with your gut.

This is what BLINK is all about. Our ability to instantly know what is real from what is fiction. What is good from what is bad? Gladwell is telling us to go with our right (creative) brain, and for the moment to shut down our left (logical, analytical) brain, and oh he is so right.

In example after example, the author goes through diverse instances where people in just the time it takes to BLINK, can make FABULOUS decisions that turn out to be the right ones. Others using the power of their analytical minds can take days, weeks, and even months, and come to the wrong decision. There's something going on here, and Gladwell is onto it. Human beings have five million years of evolutionary history behind us, and consciousness for only the last 15,000 or 20,000 years.

Somehow, we have TURNED OFF the power of our unconscious instinctual patterns, and overridden them with our super analytical ways of logic. The result is inferior decisions to what we had before we became conscious. Hey, when a lion was chasing down our ancestors for a meal, you didn't have much time to think.

By the way, every page of this relatively short book is fascinating. You will literally not be able to put it down. Let's look at a few of the topics that Gladwell covers in depth and convincingly.

A) The J. Paul Getty Museum & the Kouros Statue

The cash-flushed Getty Museum wanted to buy a 7-foot Greek statue for $10 million. With contract in hand they call in some of the greatest experts in the world who after running exhaustive scientific tests, agree that it's the real thing and you should jump to buy it. At the same time a handful of other experts just looking at the object instantly announce it's a fake, and you should walk away. Learn who was right and why. Hint: it took 2 seconds of looking to KNOW the answer.

B) Who's a good Professor in less than 30 seconds

Remember when we went to college we would attend a lecture or two to determine if we wanted to take the entire course with a certain professor. In BLINK you will see scientific studies that prove you can come to the same decision by watching a video of the professor for 30 seconds. Who's kidding whom?

C) What if you could tell how long a potential marriage would last?

This one is mind blowing. John Gottman of the University of Washington has shown in tests that he can do this with accuracy. Watching one hour of a couple talking, and Gottman can tell with 95% accuracy if 15 years later, they will still be married. Blink goes into it in detail. Too bad, I didn't learn about this study sooner.

D) Why do some doctors get sued, and others not at all?

You would think that the risk of being sued if you are a doctor is all about making mistakes, or improper medical care. BLINK shows that its really about words like "RUSHED, IGNORED, and TREATED POORLY."

E) Can a President of the United States be elected on looks alone?

Read BLINK and you will see how an entire nation got suckered into electing Warren Warding President just for that reason, unbelievable but true. Read how and why, and be mesmerized.

F) Only 14.5% of men are six feet and over. Why are 58% of CEO's six feet, or taller?

Pretty wild when you think about it, yet true. Could there be some kind of unwritten or unconscious criteria for being a Fortune 500 CEO that involves height? There aren't enough tall people to COMPLETELY staff any one company. Why is it that the tall ones seem to rise to the TOP?

G) Blue Team versus Red Team

This is my personal favorite. The American military runs war games all the time. The good guys who are us are always the BLUE Team. The enemy is always the RED team. In preparation for the first Iraq war in the early 1990's, the government ran the exercise, and put General Paul Van Riper in charge of the bad guys, the RED team.

The bottom line is that the bad guys blew away the good guys, the Americans by using unconventional "BLINK" type thinking, while the BLUE Team relied on conventional, overwhelming force, and inside the Beltway type bureaucratic thinking. This illustrates why this book is so important. You will learn out of the box type thinking.

You will also learn when to use it, and when to go with your logical left brain type thinking. By the way in the war exercise when the bad guys, the RED Team beat the good guys the BLUE Team with ease, what did the Pentagon do? They announced that the game would be done over again, and they outlawed the techniques that the bad guys the RED Team employed.

The result, the good guys won. The problem is that nobody told the bad guys in Iraq during the second Iraq War that these techniques were outlawed, and thus our Generals as usual find themselves in some difficulty to say the least. Read BLINK, and find out how and why. This book is FASCINATING, and NOT TO BE PUT DOWN, ONCE YOU START READING IT.

Richard Stoyeck

60 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

Tom the savvy consumer

from that conclusion he advances the idea that your opinions of and interactions with other people are just as easily revealed a

Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2014

Blink presents some loosely related phenomena that demonstrate we can briefly be conditioned to make a predicable association or link. For example as a test subject you might be asked to view a video screen and very quickly key a response to what you see. (My example) - the screen flashes the number sequence 1 and then 5 repeatedly then flashes the number 1 and prompts you to quickly type the next number - you will type 5 but without the earlier displays you would likely have typed 2. From this the author of Blink believes he has revealed in you a concealed belief the number 5 immediately follows 1; from that conclusion he advances the idea that your opinions of and interactions with other people are just as easily revealed and manipulated. I suspect most readers will reject this concept and rightfully so. Undoubtedly our views and opinions are shaped but shaped by a multitude of unique and continuing life experiences. Any test that depends on flashing associations and "hit the button quick" is not a revealing glimpse of the soul but merely a momentary logical response even if the above sequence of 1 and 5 is altered to display "criminal and minority".

The cover notes suggest the book is concerned with the process of thinking or perhaps about great thinkers but in reading Blink the only continuity we encounter has to do with social ills we visit upon each other.

Mr. Gladwell sees a world of social injustice and colossal errors committed by .... well committed by those among us who are not women and not members of any minority group. Apparently these evils are caused by hasty thinking or perhaps too much thinking both of which can be fixed or made better if the perpetrators help themselves to some life skills found in his book.

While assuming the condescending demeanor of an elementary school teacher he admonishes and instructs us in the science of forming opinions using a grandiose scientific tone and yet offers no evidence his conclusions are accepted in the scientific community. What we get instead is a series of opinions and chats with the odd researcher who appears to be conducting independent and poorly designed experiments.

For example Mr. Gladwell writes of research revealing car sales persons in the Chicago area are "cheating" women and minorities when selfsame agree to purchase a car at a price higher than that paid by white males. The author declines to inform the reader the sales personnel themselves may be women and minorities and clearly prefers to have us believe only male whites sell cars in the Chicago area - which of course simply isn't true. So no study is done to examine this phenomenon when both buyer and salesperson share the same characteristics. This aside we generally accept that skills are learned through repetition - so how many times had the white men in this study negotiated and purchased a car compared to how many times the women in the study negotiated and purchased a car - more, less, same? We don't know and neither does Mr. Gladwell. The author seems to omit or ignore explanations contrary to his narrative of social injustice. One wonders if this is the same kind of cheating that goes on when most men purchase jewelry, vacation deals or groceries?

Later in the book the author locates a clearly unjustified police shooting/murder involving four white police and a black victim. Mr. Gladwell then suggests the entire event was avoidable had the officers used the book's suggested technique of reading facial expressions (after midnight, in a building hall, on a dark skin face) a skill made difficult under the best circumstances of daylight in a open area with maximum contrasting facial features. I'm easy to agree with the concept but the example offered seems misplaced and designed to support the underlying theme in Blink.

The author closes with yet another injustice owing to hasty thinking, this time it seems women have been underrepresented in brass horn sections of orchestras, apparently piano, string and woodwind sections are in good standing. Happily we learn the brass horn problem itself has long been resolved by placing auditioning musicians behind a screen, presumably the screen removed both the bias and all attempts to balance the orchestra to the audience demographic - now if we can only get some racial and cultural balance in Hollywood movies and pop music (a much better topic more suited to the talented Mr. Gladwell's quest ).

All in all Blink is a study of the obvious in human behavior embellished with some silly ideas. Obviously deciphering tone of voice and facial expressions is innate. Equally obvious we all know when we feel good in a relationship even when we can't articulate the details. Further it is generally acknowledged a group/mob is more aggressive than an individual . Also it comes as no surprise we perform best when we are relaxed and focused. Finally subliminal suggestion might influence our behavior sometimes briefly except when numerous studies show it doesn't.

Blink could be dismissed as a harmless hash of observations related to how we form opinions were it not for Mr. Gladwell's insistence that we pit one ethnic/gender group against another for no apparent reason other than to inject drama into this pseudo-science in hopes of selling a book.

Social injustice exists aplenty, Mr. Gladwell would do well to pursue the subject but with a more honest approach - good luck Mr. Gladwell Hollywood is ripe for the taking.

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Tom the savvy consumer

from that conclusion he advances the idea that your opinions of and interactions with other people are just as easily revealed a

Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2014

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25 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

A terrible collection of cherry picked anecdotes and conflicting data

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2018

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A terrible collection of cherry picked anecdotes and conflicting data, all carefully laid out to appeal to the instant gratification of the human ego.

Gladwell had made a chunk of change telling us we can "blink" and know the truest of truths... that our guts are inherently correct (well, except the many times he points out how incorrect they are, due to racism (except when he back pedals and says maybe the people in that example aren't racist, actually), sexism (except when he says it's possible sexism was not, in fact, a factor in such and such examples), and other biases (which the book both promises to teach us to control and says we have *no ability* to control), and that by "thin-slicing" (making use of the "adaptive unconscious" of our mind, which, incidentally, he says repeatedly can never be unlocked) we can be better people, fight wars "better", and solve the problems of the world.

It's a book for the casual reader, so the stories he uses to back up his arguments are often terribly irresponsible anecdotes. The studies he references are rarely detailed sufficiently so that the reader could know whether they'd had any controls, had been repeated and peer reviewed, etc. They're riddled with opinion and assumptions about results, and we're left to assume the lens from which he makes these statements is pure and holy.

The best take away from this self help quickie is that some people will, as a result of spending a dozen or so hours reading it and thinking about their minds and how they work, will be, going forward, more introspective, which is not a bad thing. The worst take away is that some (and I fear most) people will glean only the basest concept from his promises: that their guts are always right, leaving them less introspective and more irrationally bold and self-satisfied.

336 people found this helpful

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Todd Schadler

Did not like.

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2013

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I'm surprised by all of the glowing reviews here. Unfortunately for me I suppose, this book was my introduction to Malcolm Gladwell. Wasn't impressed.

As another reviewer noted already, the idea was good in theory, but apparently very difficult to approach in practice. There were far too many anecdotes (some of which dreadfully recounted the procedures of quantitative research... an absolute snore-fest), and to top it off, some of the points CONTRADICTED each other to the point where one just couldn't be sure what he was arguing for anymore. Judging from this book alone, Gladwell reminds me of one of those college professors that looks good on paper and in person, but doesn't say very much anything at all. That one obnoxious tenured professor who reads directly from PowerPoint slides and then expects her/his demonstration of lazy thinking to pass for good teaching.

If you're the type of reader that recoils from the idea of using indirect--possibly irrelevant and tangential--anecdotes to make an argument, then you'll probably, at the very least, strongly dislike this little number (**SPOILER: the example that immediately comes to mind--although I'm sure there are better ones--is when he talks about the quantitative data overload suffered by the Blue Team versus the ingenious invention of the valid and reliable heart condition survey administered in Cook County). As a side note--though no less critical a point--I also found problematic the fact that he doesn't even DESCRIBE or DEFINE in any considerable detail the nebulous and highly contested term, "unconscious." He just sort of takes it for granted that we all have one and use it in the same way, and on a regular basis. Again, lazy thinking.

I hate giving books lousy reviews because I know from personal experience how difficult drafting a book can be. However, I would be remiss if I didn't suggest to potential readers of this book (especially the ones that are thinking about making a purchase) that there is definitely better material out there (and for FREE, no less). Just run a key search on Google Scholar and you'll find a plethora of material on this subject and related issues that are more thoroughly parsed out than the half-hearted attempt of this book. College graduates will probably know this fact all too well.

38 people found this helpful

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Cliente de Kindle

Disappointed...

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2023

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This book should have been labeled "acceptable" not "good." I don't want a refund, I'll spend more on gas when I return it. I'll just throw it in the trash and be careful not to buy from this seller again.

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SteveNY

better decisions on less information: don't buy this book

Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2005

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The premise of the book is that "instinct" or hunches can be formed by a first glance (thin slices) of information inputs; this data sometimes is enough as our subconscience focuses on what is really important in that decision long before we can clearly articulate our analysis of the data inputs. On that note, the key thin slice of information you need to know is: don't buy the book as that is the entire message. The remainder of the book is a host of wonderful examples, but no concrete further pertinent information is offered.

Early in the book, the author suggests that sometimes the hunches can go awry, but "for a very specific and consistent set reasons, and those reasons can be identified and understood. It is possible to learn when to listen to that powerful onboard computer and when to be wary of it."

If the purpose of the book was to highlight and divulge in a clear and precise manner "when to listen... and when to be wary of it", it would be a very useful tool to enhance decision making. Having failed to offer this, the book fails to give the reader any real value beyond what we instintively already know.

Ironic, isn't it? We have enough information about the book very rapidly: it is entertaining but lacking value.

38 people found this helpful

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Walter

Worse, these experts should have at least eventually been ...

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2017

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Intuition is a valuable tool, for certain, but intuition is informed by by the information and experience in your brain. Art experts and historians, to use the first chapter as an example, might have correctly noticed something was off about the statue, but they could only do this because of their years of study. It would have been worthless to lean on the intuition of a group of non-experts to determine if the Kouros statue was a fake. Worse, these experts should have at least eventually been able to articulate how they came to their conclusions. Relying solely on intuition can only get you about halfway to any conclusion.

Worse yet, if you don't understand the nature of your intuition, you will fail to predict instances where it is wholly incorrect and uninformed.

I regret buying the pop science novella, and the only silver lining here is that people who are foolish enough to believe that Blink can revolutionize how they think are probably too unintelligent to rely on anything other than intuition.

58 people found this helpful

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Stacy

Out of date.

Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2023

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Mediocre writing. Unimpressed.

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Ward A. Fredericks

Less Than Meets the Eye

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2005

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This lighweight book is a surprise. You do expect some analysis and content when reading a book on the current state of thinking about brain activity. There is no substance here.

There are lots of anecdotes about supposedly instant analysis of tennis swings, statues, and the like. The thing that is not credited is the time, effort, study and intellectual training it takes to erect the pattern recognition process that is behind these "instant" decisions. (As if an untrained individuals' instant conclusion about anything would be of any value whatsoever.) There are trained people in many professions who can arrive at a conclusion quickly -- especially on how to categorize a situation or an object which relates to their field. They have internalized the schema of that field, and it is this unconscious competance that makes them an expert. So --- what else is new here?

Not a piece I would compare with Penrose, Dennett or any of the scholars of brain activity. Sadly, in my opinion, I wasted my time.

43 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Repetative, and for the most part irrelevant to daily life.

Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2022

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This is my first time reading a piece by Malcom Gladwell. I was extremely frustrated by the repetative ideals portrayed through every section of this book. I spent little to no time elaborating on what was said, as very little written was actually meamingful to the average person.
My expectations for this book were high as it was recomended to me by a mentor, but I gained very little from reading this. Do your research and read reviews, as I lacked in doing so before purchasing this book.

One person found this helpful

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T. A. McCluskey, MA, CH, CI

Left confused.

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2007

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Blink, is predominately a collection of outcomes from previous research on unconscious thinking. In the first half of the book, the author tries to categorize rapid, unconsciousness decision making as an "instinct" that the human mind makes on its own. The second half of the book the author wonders off into a re-interpretation of unconscious thinking as something that is a product of extensive training and experience. The preface of the book is "The power of thinking without thinking". With the two different interpretations of unconscious thinking, I am not sure the thesis of the book was proven. For anyone with little education into the human mind, this could be a good primer on unconscious thinking, otherwise, leave it alone.

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