Malcolm Gladwell's Blink

Blink

by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell presents in the pages of Blink arguments for and examples of 3 key points he wishes the reader to understand about the human capacity for snap judgements:

1. Our quick decisions are every bit as valuable as our deliberate and analytical decisions;
2. Our quick judgements are not immune from error due to the distractions and disablement caused by competing interests and our emotions; and,
3. Our intuitive capacities can be “educated and controlled”. (15)

In Chapter 1, “The Theory of Thin Slices – How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way”, Gladwell defines his concept of thin-slicing: “... the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.” (23)  The main example provided in Chapter 1 of this capacity is psychologist John Gottman’s “love lab”.  According to Gladwell, Gottman can predict with 95% accuracy whether a married couple will stay married 15 years later based only on his analysis of 1 hour of conversation between the husband and wife.  Gottman contends that a “distinctive signature” of either positive or negative sentiment override “arises naturally and automatically” from such brief exchanges, allowing him to make an accurate prediction. (29)  In particular, he searches vigilantly for any indications of contempt.

The other example of thin slicing shows that ... you can learn as much – or more – from once glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.” (37) Psychologist Samuel Gosling designed an experiment whereby two groups of people were asked to identify the personality traits of college students based on the contents and condition of their dorms.  The first group of people were close friends of the students while the second group were complete strangers.  The test results were surprising: “On balance, the strangers ended up doing a much better job, [which] ... suggests that it is quite possible for people who have never met us and who have spent only twenty minutes thinking about us to come to a better understanding of who we are than people who have known us for years.” (36)  Knowing someone well, Gladwell suggests, can actually complicate and confuse our judgement of that person. (more about this point later)

Gladwell concludes the opening chapter noting that we shouldn’t regard thin-slicing as “exotic”; rather, “It is a central part of what it means to be human.” (43)  Indeed, it is so common that many disciplines have their own terms for it (ie. Basketball players call it “court sense”.)

The main point of Chapter 2, “The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Decisions”, is that our snap decisions are unconscious and, as such, altogether mysterious and beyond full explanation.  The mysterious nature of our intuitions leads to what Gladwell calls “a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.” (69)  Two illustrations he gives of this problem are baseball great Ted Williams and speed dating: “Ted Williams could hit a baseball as well as anyone in history, and he could explain with utter confidence how to do it.  But his explanation did not match his actions, just as Mary’s [a speed dater’s] explanation for what she wanted in a man did not necessarily match who she was attracted to in the moment.” (68-69)

The “dark side” of rapid decisions is the theme of Chapter 3, “The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall for Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men”.   Our quick judgements about people and things are rooted in implicit biases of which we may not even be aware.  This, Gladwell argues, explains why Warren Harding, a man of unremarkable and questionable abilities, became President of the United States.  People have a natural bias towards associating “imposing physical stature” with leadership, and Harding was tall and strikingly handsome. (88)  As proof of this bias, Gladwell offers the following statistic: “In the U.S. population, about 14.5% of all men are six feet or taller.  Of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, the number is 58%” (87)

 According to Gladwell, there is good news with respect to the dark side of our quick judgements, and this optimism surrounding our snap decisions is demonstrated through 3 stories that are shared in the second half of the book – some stories of success and some stories of failure.  Since our first impressions are the result of our experiences and our environment, it is possible for us to change them.  “We can alter the way we thin-slice – by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.” (97) 

The first story - one of successful thin-slicing - is that of General Paul Van Riper’s victory-through-spontaneity in a military war game called the Millennium Challenge.  This war game “... was not just a battle between two [hypothetical] armies.  It was a battle between two perfectly opposed military philosophies.” (108)  Blue Team in this fictitious conflict used a comprehensive computer analysis of multiple factors to deal with aggression in the Persian Gulf by a rogue commander whereas Red Team, led by Van Riper, relied on his intuition and experience in the field of battle to make spontaneous decisions.  It was Red Team that won the war game.

The key learning from this story isn’t just that, in critical situations where time is of the essence, quick intuitive decisions are better than extensive rational analyses, although this point is certainly valid.  Afterall, Blue Team was defeated because it suffered from a “paralysis through analysis.” (121)  However, the spontaneous decisions Van Riper made weren’t random – They were the product of “training and rules and rehearsal” (114) and the subsequent wisdom, experience, and good judgement of Van Riper and the other members of his team.  Thus, the key lesson is that the best decisions are those that rely “... on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking” although “frugality matters”. (141)

The second story is that of a rock musician named Kenna.  Despite enthusiastic endorsements by musical experts, Kenna’s musical career never really got off the ground because market research and focus groups failed to show that his music would be popular with the masses.  Gladwell believes that the lesson that should be learned from the stalled musical career of Kenna is the same lesson about thin-slicing that should be learned from the New Coke fiasco: “Thin-slicing has to be done in context.” (166)

New Coke was created in response to the Pepsi Challenge.  When the majority of people, while blind-folded, selected Pepsi Cola over Coke based on one sip of each drink, Coca Cola responded with the introduction of a sweeter version of its product – New Coke.  However, New Coke proved to be so unpopular that the company reverted back to its traditional version of Coke, which it called Coca Cola Classic.  The context Coca Cola failed to consider was, simply put, “... in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind” or in just one sip.  The actual experience is of drinking an entire can of Coke, and wanting the taste sensation to be one of more than just sweetness.  As well, Coke drinkers also transfer unconscious associations they have of the product – including even the colour of its can – to the drinking experience, so the new-look Coke, for them, was a bust. 

    

Similarly, although the musical experts were capable of identifying and articulating the various components of Kenna’s music that appealed to them, rock music fans are “not as savy” as them. (187) The tastes of radio listeners and the contexts in which they buy music are less defined and far more idiosyncratic.

Time Magazine Cover - The New Coke Fiasco

Chapter 6, “Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind Reading”, tells the tragic story of the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, the victim of over-zealous New York police officers who mistook the Wheeler Avenue resident in South Bronx for a burglar (or worse) and, in the blink of an eye, believing the wallet he reached for in his pocket was a gun, shot him to death.  For Gladwell, this story is an illustration of what he terms “mind-blindness” – a temporary condition of being unable to interpret another person’s motivation.  (221)

According to the author, under normal circumstances, we all possess the ability to “thin-slice other people” - that is, “effortlessly and automatically” interpret the clues and accessible information on their faces to, as it were, read their minds. (213)  However, as the seven seconds of tragic misjudgement on Wheeler Street suggest, factors such as over-arousal and a lack of sufficient time to think can disrupt our ability to effectively thin-slice.   Of the crippling effect of a lack of time to reflect, Gladwell writes, “Our powers of thin-slicing and snap judgments are extraordinary.  But even the giant computer in our unconscious needs a moment to do its work.” (233)

Gladwell maintains, however, that just as we can develop better conscious thinking skills through training and practice, in a similar manner, we can learn to improve our rapid decision making.  As evidence of his argument, he presents the example of a veteran police officer who, despite having a gun pulled on him at very close range by a teenage gang member he was pursuing, drew on his training and experience in similar high-stress situations and quickly judged the situation correctly and held his fire:

When I got about five feet from the guy, he came up with a chrome .25 auto. Then as soon as his hand reached his center stomach area, he dropped the gun right on the sidewalk. We took him into custody, and that was that.  ... I sure perceived the threat of that gun. [but] ... I could see a lot of fear on his face, which I also perceived in other situations, and that led me to believe that if I would just give him just a little bit more time that he might give me an option to not shoot him.

If his hand would’ve come out a little higher from his waistband, if the gun had just cleared his stomach area a little bit more, to where I would have seen the muzzle walk my way, it would’ve been over with.  But the barrel never came up and something in my mind just told me I didn’t have to shoot yet. (241)

The Tragic Death of Amadou Diallo
For Gladwell, an illustration of 'mind-blindedness'

In the conclusion to Blink, Gladwell tells the story of how Abbie Conant, a trombonist, auditioned for the Munich Philharmonic.  At first, while hidden behind a screen, she was deemed perfect for the orchestra; however, when it was then discovered she was a woman, the Philharmonic committee formed an entirely different opinion of her abilities and though allowing her to join the orchestra, eventually demoted her.  Gladwell states that the lesson that should be learned from this story is that our carelessness with “our powers of rapid cognition” - that is, our lack of awareness of where our first impressions originate or “what they mean” – makes us vulnerable to the “subtle influences that can alter or undermine or bias the products of our unconscious.” (252)

However, the “small miracle” that occurred in the world of classical music following Conant’s story is, for the author, the “second lesson of Blink”.  Based on the injustice perpetrated on Conant, conductors and music directors, when they hold auditions, began to regularly use screens so that they could not be swayed by anything but the notes being play by the musician.  They began listening with their ears instead of their eyes.  Their ability to solve this problem teaches us that we should not be “resigned to what happens in the blink of an eye.  Instead, we should realize that “... if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we control rapid cognition.” (253)