Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking By Malcolm Gladwell

The exploration of rapid cognition by the author Malcolm Gladwell is a fascinating quest

, questioning what happens when the brain thinks within a blink (of your eye). When you are only approaching the subject, you tend to treat it as gut feel or just an emotional perception (even irrational). The author Malcolm Gladwell treats it as subconscious thinking which happens more mysteriously (unexplained) compared to traditional decision making. This sort of decision making is slightly faster than what is otherwise perceived as thinking.

An Intellectual Adventure Story

The book titled Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, appears to be slightly overwhelming at the first sight, but once you get in sync with the thought process of the author Malcolm Gladwell, it turns out to be an interesting read. The author himself describes it as an intellectual adventure story, thus giving you an idea into what his thoughts were when he decided to write the book.

You Can Make Sense Out Of It

The author says you just need a thin slice of the event experience and you can make sense out of it. Superficially seen, it appears like magic, though its not its completely logical and rational process.

Real Life Examples and Anecdotes

There are several real life examples and anecdotes used by Malcolm Gladwell to prove his assumptions (or observations). For example, John Gottman who is a psychologist can predict reasonably accurately (95%) whether a couple will remain married after fifteen years or not (from the time he observes them). The same accuracy drops to about 90% if he observes couples for more than fifteen minutes. A person with a cynical attitude might say it can be predicted even otherwise, but John Gottman has filtered out some indicators on the basis of which he predicts the future of the marriages.

Do You Feel Interested In the Study?

Maybe but we are not concerned about marriages only. In another example, Lee Goldman, a cardiologist made a decision tree which took the help of three key factors to diagnose the heart attacks, so that the guesswork in the treatment of heart attacks could be reduced. The success rate of his diagnosis was 95% whereas conventional methods could only deliver the success rate of 75-89%.

How Much Of It Matters?

The process of thin slicing, as illustrated by the author Malcolm Gladwell, is throwing out irrelevant facts while finding out what really matters and where it fits in. The unconscious mind is better at this process than the usual thinking process, and the answers arrived at with the help of subconscious are mostly better than the conventional thinking.

by: Prasoon Kumar

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