Synopsis
Social commentator Malcolm Gladwell once again takes the pulse of contemporary experience and, in BLINK, comes up with this enlightening exploration of the role of rapid thinking in everyday life. Gladwell shows how what we call snap judgments, first impressions, or instinct are often right on target and get to the core truths. He reveals that experts call this process "thin-slicing"--the ability to dive for truth the way a basketball player grabs a loose ball on the court, cutting through layers and levels of knowledge that resist tortured analysis. He reports on current research in the fields of science and psychology, and their applications in marketing. Gladwell writes of the marriage therapist who can discern, by listening to three minutes of the parties talking to each other, whether their marriage will last, and how thin-slicing operates in a job interview or when an insurance company wants to identify which doctors are candidates for lawsuits. It might be a sense of structures and patterns, or a Sherlock Holmesian sensitivity to the messages we send out, or just the ability to filter out bad signals and bad information. Gladwell draws examples from the home, office, and school, and proceeds with care and caution through his material; his exposition is as engaging as it was in his previous book, THE TIPPING POINT. After reading Gladwell you will more likely trust your first impressions, but wonder what others are thinking, too.
| Details | | Narrated by: | Malcolm Gladwell |
Publisher's Note
In his landmark best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant, in the blink of an eye, that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work, in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing", filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables. Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.
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