Blink
Blink: the power of thinking without thinking
Malcolm Gladwell
When I saw the title, Blink: the power of thinking without thinking, I have decided in a blink of an eye that I have to read the book. And it was the best thing to do.
The book opens with a very interesting case study: an unusual piece of art (korus) has been discovered and brought to a museum for selling. There, the museum’s group of art experts, after having studied and analyzed thoroughly the statue, elicits it is an original. The curator, having doubts, brings a second group of experts to express their opinion about the korus. Members of the second group take one look --- blink --- and declare it a fake. Eventually, facts prove that the statue is not legitimate. How did the second team of experts know that was true? Why was the first group so wrong? Are we always right when we make snap judgments? How can we think without thinking? Why sometimes we find it impossible to explain our best decisions to others?
The author, Malcolm Gladwell, tries to answer these questions throughout his book by offering us examples of situations which he used as case studies: the world of gambling, speed-dating, war games, music, and a few more. My favourite case study is the one with the psychologist who, looking at an hour-long video of a married couple conversing, can predict with 95% accuracy if they will divorce in the next few years or not. How can the psychologist predict that? Read this amazing book and you’ll find out, along with answers for questions like: how our brain works? What is going on inside our heads during first impressions? Why sometimes we act in a particular way without being able to explain it?
Even though as children we were taught to think twice before doing something or to act carefully, without hurrying, Blink shows us that sometimes haste does not make waste. “Blink” means thinking without thinking. This is a phenomenon that we have all experienced at one time or
Malcolm Gladwell
When I saw the title, Blink: the power of thinking without thinking, I have decided in a blink of an eye that I have to read the book. And it was the best thing to do.
The book opens with a very interesting case study: an unusual piece of art (korus) has been discovered and brought to a museum for selling. There, the museum’s group of art experts, after having studied and analyzed thoroughly the statue, elicits it is an original. The curator, having doubts, brings a second group of experts to express their opinion about the korus. Members of the second group take one look --- blink --- and declare it a fake. Eventually, facts prove that the statue is not legitimate. How did the second team of experts know that was true? Why was the first group so wrong? Are we always right when we make snap judgments? How can we think without thinking? Why sometimes we find it impossible to explain our best decisions to others?
The author, Malcolm Gladwell, tries to answer these questions throughout his book by offering us examples of situations which he used as case studies: the world of gambling, speed-dating, war games, music, and a few more. My favourite case study is the one with the psychologist who, looking at an hour-long video of a married couple conversing, can predict with 95% accuracy if they will divorce in the next few years or not. How can the psychologist predict that? Read this amazing book and you’ll find out, along with answers for questions like: how our brain works? What is going on inside our heads during first impressions? Why sometimes we act in a particular way without being able to explain it?
Even though as children we were taught to think twice before doing something or to act carefully, without hurrying, Blink shows us that sometimes haste does not make waste. “Blink” means thinking without thinking. This is a phenomenon that we have all experienced at one time or