Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell focuses on how much information we get in a couple of seconds. Throughout the book different studies are used to help back up his theories. He focused, in the beginning of the book, on how people can know more about something when they have less information on it. That theme carries throughout the book. Also, it focuses on how facial expressions are relevant in our lives and can tell us more about who we are then how we portray ourselves. In the beginning of the book Gladwell mentions a type of sculpture called a Kouros. It was brought to the Getty museum and was going to be sold to them. This type of sculpture is very hard to find intact and most are in pieces so when they saw this sculpture they were skeptical. They ran tests and they supported the sculpture being real but when experts came to look at the sculpture they knew it was a fake. After some digging they found evidence that it really was a fake. This supported his theory of not needing to know every detail since it will confuse you more. He uses the idea of thin slicing to explain how they knew about the Kouros. Thin Slicing is when our unconscious finds patterns in situations or behaviors based on a moment. John Gottman uses thin slicing to predict divorces in newly wedded people. Gottman asks couples to talk about something in their relationship that they disagree with and talk/ argue about it for around 10 minutes. He can thin slice people using their facial expressions even if they were only showing for a fraction of a second. Sometimes that fraction of a second tells people how you really feel. Although thin slicing is good there is a negative side effects from it which are stereotypes. We can look at someone and judge them in a second. Gladwell mentions that there is an IAT (Implicit Association Test) created by Anthony G. Greenwald. This test gives you a word or a picture and you have to put in in a category that is on the right or on the left. One of these categories is black and white paired with good and bad. When good is paired with African American and bad is paired with European American it takes people a lot longer to categorize the words or pictures since the tests measures our unconscious level of our attitude. They are stereotypes that are ingrained into our subconscious. No one deliberately chooses their unconscious attitudes. Later on in the book Gladwell talks about white space and when we run out of it. He talks about how when something is right in front of you and you can’t see it, it’s because you don't have enough space between you and that object. He uses the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan as an example for this. He said that the body guards didn’t see the shooter because he was only a couple feet away and when they tried to be heroic and pulled their guns out the shooting was already over. Throughout the book, however, the theme just repeats itself and can get repetitive. He can be a hundred pages from the beginning and still mention the Kouros and go back to that story although there is another story being told. Also when he is explaining a study sometimes he stops and puts a different story in the middle and gets back to explaining the study after the story. I do like how he has a lot of stories to keep you hooked and each story is different. There are stories on shootings, art, dating, divorce, and so much more. Blink is a fascinating book that lets you dive into your unconscious mind and see how much more it knows than your conscious. It helps you find out what it can do and makes you think of ways you can help others by stopping judgement that happens in a blink of an eye. Like women aren’t usually found in orchestras because they are thought to be worse than men but when they put a screen up and people auditioned more women were chosen for the role. If putting a screen up can change a person's view of how women can play instruments, how do you think it would be if we put a screen up to end all discrimination that we consciously or unconsciously act upon. This book is supposed to let you see this problem and help us find a way to fix it.
In the beginning of the book Gladwell mentions a type of sculpture called a Kouros. It was brought to the Getty museum and was going to be sold to them. This type of sculpture is very hard to find intact and most are in pieces so when they saw this sculpture they were skeptical. They ran tests and they supported the sculpture being real but when experts came to look at the sculpture they knew it was a fake. After some digging they found evidence that it really was a fake. This supported his theory of not needing to know every detail since it will confuse you more. He uses the idea of thin slicing to explain how they knew about the Kouros. Thin Slicing is when our unconscious finds patterns in situations or behaviors based on a moment. John Gottman uses thin slicing to predict divorces in newly wedded people. Gottman asks couples to talk about something in their relationship that they disagree with and talk/ argue about it for around 10 minutes. He can thin slice people using their facial expressions even if they were only showing for a fraction of a second. Sometimes that fraction of a second tells people how you really feel. Although thin slicing is good there is a negative side effects from it which are stereotypes. We can look at someone and judge them in a second. Gladwell mentions that there is an IAT (Implicit Association Test) created by Anthony G. Greenwald. This test gives you a word or a picture and you have to put in in a category that is on the right or on the left. One of these categories is black and white paired with good and bad. When good is paired with African American and bad is paired with European American it takes people a lot longer to categorize the words or pictures since the tests measures our unconscious level of our attitude. They are stereotypes that are ingrained into our subconscious. No one deliberately chooses their unconscious attitudes. Later on in the book Gladwell talks about white space and when we run out of it. He talks about how when something is right in front of you and you can’t see it, it’s because you don't have enough space between you and that object. He uses the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan as an example for this. He said that the body guards didn’t see the shooter because he was only a couple feet away and when they tried to be heroic and pulled their guns out the shooting was already over.
Throughout the book, however, the theme just repeats itself and can get repetitive. He can be a hundred pages from the beginning and still mention the Kouros and go back to that story although there is another story being told. Also when he is explaining a study sometimes he stops and puts a different story in the middle and gets back to explaining the study after the story. I do like how he has a lot of stories to keep you hooked and each story is different. There are stories on shootings, art, dating, divorce, and so much more.
Blink is a fascinating book that lets you dive into your unconscious mind and see how much more it knows than your conscious. It helps you find out what it can do and makes you think of ways you can help others by stopping judgement that happens in a blink of an eye. Like women aren’t usually found in orchestras because they are thought to be worse than men but when they put a screen up and people auditioned more women were chosen for the role. If putting a screen up can change a person's view of how women can play instruments, how do you think it would be if we put a screen up to end all discrimination that we consciously or unconsciously act upon. This book is supposed to let you see this problem and help us find a way to fix it.