This is going to be a very interesting review ..

I was introduced to this book through Thinking, Fast And Slow and was very excited to read it; the idea is brilliant, it dwells on one of my favorite topics in psychology, and who doesn't want to have a deeper understanding of their own thought processes?
It started with the Kouros story which was a great choice in my opinion to start the book with. In retrospect, it kind of summarized the whole book in a story format. One of my fav.

I also really liked the idea of temporary autism and it's safe to say that it got me interested to the extent of wanting to know more about it and I honestly won't mind a book dedicated to it. The book also touched upon Priming in good details compared to other similar books.


A huge chunk of the book, and by that I mean >70% of it, were examples to the "Fast Thinking" process, or the Blink in this book's terms, and if you've been reading my reviews you should realize by this point that I really love stories as examples as long as I get my share (I go with big portions here) of facts, science, and evidence based info. I was forced to compare the "Blink" to "Fast Thinking" introduced in Thinking, Fast And Slow, where the author in the later provided a huge deal of facts along with the multiple examples. I didn't find this in blink, in fact, I felt it's a good support for "System 1" (a synonym for fast thinking in the book's terms) , read before or after it to provide deeper understanding of it, it that is wanted. It won't have satisfied me at all as a standalone (maybe cuz I read the other book before it?)

Another thing, the writer seemed a bit unsure, although he did lean more towards one of the opinions. Apart from repeating himself (and the incidents) a couple of times, he fluctuated between trusting our blink or going with deliberate thinking.

Overall, this was a good read and I'll recommend it to others ✨.

“ The answer is that we are not helpless in the face of our first impressions. They may bubble up from the unconscious- from behind a locked door inside our brain - but just because something is outside of awareness doesn’t mean it is outside of control.”

This is an engaging read because
1. it leads the argument of Snap Judgements - perfect snap judgements and why there is a need to perfect snap judgements
2. The author pulls examples from all over the place - From Art, Music, Military, Policing, Business, Research work to bolster his point making it very holistic
3. Very good trivia and addition of vocabulary- be it Thin Slicing, Warren Harding error, Mind Blind, Sensation Transference, Duchenne Smile

What it misses is the question on how to improve snap judgements and if there is some toolbox for the same, and it gets repetitive in proving the point at certain places.

But I still give it a 5/5 because I enjoyed the examples, case studies, research and I feel like I’ve learnt something reading this book! Happy reading

Here's Blink in a nutshell:

Split decisions can be good; better than decisions where we take a lot of time to carefully weigh our options and use scientific evidence.

Except when they're not.

Rapid cognition is an exciting and powerful way to use your brain's quick, intuitive capabilities to make stunningly accurate decisions, and can even lead you to have better success in sports, business and politics.

Except when it won't.

We should learn to trust our snap judgments, even in seemingly complex situations where we don't have a lot of information.

Except not really.


Basically the book gives scientific and anecdotal evidence on why rapid cognition can be both a good and bad thing, without offering us much advise on how to tell the difference between situations where we should or shouldn't trust our instincts.

There are many times when I felt that Gladwell contradicted himself. To support his "rapid cognition is good" section of the book, he uses an example of a psychological test where students were able to tell whether or not a professor was good at their job by simply watching a 5 second clip of them lecturing with the sound turned off. The results basically corresponded with impressions given by other students who spent an entire class with those professors - thus proving that there is some mysterious and powerful part of our subconscious that can make accurate snap judgments.

But then later on in the book, in the "rapid cognition is bad" section, Gladwell warns us that, in general, people instantly like tall, attractive white people better than short, unattractive minorities.

WELL DUH! OBVIOUSLY THE STUDENTS RATING THE PROFESSORS WERE BIASED BY WHETHER OR NOT THEY WERE TALL, WHITE, OR ATTRACTIVE!

Mystery solved!

While Gladwell brings up some interesting concepts, his book never gels into a coherent whole. I read most of it in under a day and already my rapid cognition is telling me it's not worth finishing.

I went into Blink thinking I was going to learn to think faster and more effectively. Nope. Instead, Mr. Gladwell spent most of the book giving anecdotes on people who follow their first instincts and whether it bore good or bad results. He just goes back and forth. So do the studies he cites.

The book was interesting but not really helpful. Not one of the author’s better works. I recommend reading The Tipping Point instead.

Basically: trust your instincts because your subconscious understands things your conscious takes a while to put in words.

I would put this book in the category of "Freakonomics" and "The Tipping Point." By the same author as the latter title, Malcolm Gladwell, the purpose of this book is to weigh the advantages as well as the disadvantages of the power of the mind's ability to unconsciously leap to conclusions based on what is seen in the proverbial blink of an eye.

While I have read some negative reviews of Gladwell's book, mostly citing that he fails to inform the reader how to know when to go with your gut and when not to, as well as arguments that he urges readers not to follow their gut when the gut instincts are politically incorrect, I have to disagree with many of them. I think that Gladwell's objective in "Blink" is to make the reader simply aware of their gut instincts and to urge them to consider trusting it more frequently than we do. People tend to make decisions that are supported by a litany of rationalizations and explanations, but do we always really have reasons for why we do or think what we do? Gladwell is arguing that we don’t, and that sometimes it takes the unconscious mind to make those decisions for us. On the flip side, he also argues that sometimes we unconsciously make negative decisions based on that same quick judgment and our predetermined stereotypes, such as with people of other sexes or other races than ourselves.

“Blink” was a very complicated book with many facets and it’s hard to explain all of them or review them all without writing an essay. In the end, I think the main goal isn’t perfect knowledge of the subject of thinking without thinking, but rather consideration of it and how it can benefit us or hinder us both individually and as a society.

Friends don't let friends read Blink. It's an awful book.

Both "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" are nonfiction writings that deal with social structures and human tendancies and the unassuming look at these.
"Tipping" is more a look at society on a large scale. It has to do with trends: what makes something popular and who is involved in that process and why it works. This isn't a look at advertising or corporate businesses (although the does look at those, too) but rather a journey into the dynamics and parts of these trends. It's an intriguing and well written book, ideal for anyone who wants to know how social trends work. It has pracitcal applications as well, if you have any desire to make social changes yourself.

"Blink" is more on a personal level, and looks at how our subconcious works and how important it is in our daily life and daily choices. This book is amazing, and I highly recommend it for everyone. "Tipping" is really interesting and carries some amazing social insights, but only applies directly to those who wish to institute change, "Blink" on the other hand is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered why they make the split-second decisions they make and whether they're good or bad. Which I hope is everyone.

Malcolm Gladwell has an amazing way of writing as though he was chatting over a cup of coffee. His books are full of amazing insight, research, and profound ideas that revolutionize the world we live it, but there is never a point that you feel lost, like these ideas are only something the smart kids can truly understand.
Another thing I truly enjoy is his absolute lack of preachieness. His opinions are strongly stated, but never forced on you.

This is a book about intuition: when it is right and when it can be fatally WRONG.

I was impressed with all that was said in this book and am still thinking about why!!

In the meantime, my husband stole my copy, so before I really get into why, I will have to steal it back!!

I did listen to this book as well. It is narrated by the author. Malcolm Gladwell is a great speaker with a properly modulated voice and sympathetic tone.

The general topic was how powerful our initial impressions are because we can process stuff really quick at a subconscious level in some cases.

Blink was well written and pretty entertaining. I thought the author did a good job of coming up with interesting examples of good or bad information processing and I enjoyed reading those.

However, aside from writing style and some fun examples, I thought the content was quite neatly separable into two parts:
(a) stuff that was interesting and seemed true and which I knew already, and
(b) stuff that seemed untrue or at least incoherant and that I hadn't previously heard before. but maybe that was just my closed mind at work.

Examples of (a) were how you one's initial impression (lke in the first 5 seconds) of a teacher or an interviewee are pretty highly correlated with your opinion after an hour.

There were lots of examples of (b). Like it was weird that one of his first and favorite examples was this guy who had studied videos of couples interacting in intense detail for decades, and had created a list for how someone could score such videos to predict odds that the marriage would last. It was supposed to be an example of "blink" processing because the expert could recognize it quickly, but to me it seemed more like the opposite since (1) non-experts (including the author) all had inaccurate instinctive reactions to watching the videos, and (2) the best way to get the right answer was a mechanical scorecard -- kind of the opposite of blink.

And in general, there were examples of when you should trust your blink instinct and when that was wrong, but all the examples of when it was right or wrong seemed very post hoc (e.g. if your heart rate is over some threshold you shouldn't, but I don't think that would have come up unless he needed some explanation for why accidental police shootings occured), and he didn't really have a consistent framework for when it would be right or wrong, which made it kinda useless. and some seemed random, like the part about some musicians that musical experts liked but that did poorly in the musical equivalent of blind taste tests -- seemed likely that it was a friend of the author or some musician he liked (it was clear in the book that we should take as a given that it was a good musician and that the taste tests were wrong -- I was never quite clear why) and he was just trying to think of some way that might connect to his thesis.

I liked the description of how orchestras started doing blind auditions to avoid discrimination against women. wasn't sure that it supported his thesis, but it was interesting. that was more or less my reaction to the whole book.

This book explores the way people make decisions, particularly snap judgments, which are based on the unconscious mind. The author speaks to the importance of the first two seconds of any encounter, pointing out examples of where access to more information leads to less optimal decisions. He offers a number of case studies to support his assertions. These studies include such wide-ranging topics as the election of Warren G. Harding, the New Coke debacle, war games, orchestra auditions, police shootings, and authenticity of works of art. He shows how these first impressions can be distorted, especially in stressful situations. He explains how quick decisions can be improved through repeated exposures.

The author obviously loves his subject, and he occasionally goes overboard in providing detail. For example, he covers facial recognition patterns down to the names of the muscles in the face. Unlike some of his other books, it is harder to figure out how to bring these concepts down to an individual level. I always enjoy finding out more about how the human mind works.

4 Stars for Blink: Power of Thinking Without Thinking (audiobook) by Malcolm Gladwell read by the author.

This was a interesting look into making quick decisions. I think some of the author’s examples worked better than others.