Blink (I)

I am reading Gladwell’s ‘Blink‘ these days – actually listening to the audiobook version of it. I haven’t finished the book yet but am really really impressed by his work so far. The book’s purpose is to talk about rapid cognition and discuss how one can use it to one’s benefit. Gladwell painstakingly walks the reader through a long list of examples (drawing information from real life incidents, experiments, research and anecdotes) to drive home his point about the importance of recognizing the power of our unconscious cognition.

 

I find the information he presents on what he calls ‘thin slicing’ to be very interesting. Thin slicing is screening out useless bulk of data and focusing on tiny pieces of information for rapid decision making. Gladwell argues that decisions based on thin slicing can just be as accurate, or even more, as those based on deliberate thinking. While Gladwell provides several examples to idolize the brighter side of thin slicing, like Gottman’s study of Marriage and Morse Code, Chicago automobile sales study and Height-Salary correlation study, he mentions the Warren Harding error as the only example to highlight its negative side. However, this might be pardonable – given the fact that Gladwell is a proponent of the thin slicing methodology and no author would want to weaken the very fundamental concept around which his whole work revolves.

 

Going forward with the book – I think the stage is nicely set. I, as a reader, am convinced with the power of rapid cognition. The question is how to know when to use ‘thin slicing’ and when to avoid the next Warren Harding error. Eager to find out how Gladwell handles this question in the upcoming sections.

 

About Blink and Gladwell here