Blink by Malcolm Gladwell - First Impressions
I bought a new book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. I had my eye on it for a while and, while the subject matter sounded interesting, I was also skeptical since it sounded too guru-y. It also seems to have been popular, and that didn't help with my immediate appraisal. However, after reading a favourable review by Michael Shermer and seeing that the hardcover is at a bargain price right now, I decided to add it on top of another book order I placed this week.
The subject matter of the book is unconscious thought: not in the Freudian sense, but regarding our extraordinary capacity for making quick decisions and snap judgments with a minimum of information. More often than not, these intuitions turn out to be correct and it is often difficult or even impossible to discern how these decisions were made. Since they were entirely unconscious, the reasons for these decisions can only ever be determined in retrospect following a disproportionate amount of deliberation. Gladwell is interested in what happens in these few seconds when such an intuitive decision is made, as well as in the benefits and hazards of embracing this mode of deciding.
I started reading it tonight and, in the spirit of the book, I'll give my immediate impression. It's well written and enjoyable to read with its conversational tone and abundant anecdotes, yet it doesn't seem to dumb down the relevant psychological research. However, I think that Gladwell puts far too much emphasis on the purported counter-intuitiveness of this idea. Yes, it's kind of strange, but when he continually uses words like "mysterious" and expresses a sentiment that "we need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that--sometimes--we're better off that way," (p. 52) it is giving some potentially dangerous advice. It's true that Gladwell's thesis is not to favour impulsiveness all the time, and he discusses situations where "thin-slicing" (the act of appraising a situation using only the information immediately available in that thin slice of time) goes wrong in the later part of the book. But so far, his attitude toward this kind of thinking seems unduly favourable.
One example that I really didn't like is this: After discussing how the likelihood of a medical doctor being sued for malpractice can be reliably predicted by having uninvolved people judge a short audio recording of the doctor's interaction with a patient (with the content filtered out, preserving only intonation, pitch, and rhythm), Gladwell says this:Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk, if you have the sense that he isn't listening to you, that he's talking down to you, and that he isn't treating you with respect, listen to that feeling. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting. (p.43)
This advice is completely out of place and does not follow from the research just discussed at all! Gladwell just finished saying that the quality of care does not predict the likelihood of a malpractice suit: it is entirely contingent on the attitude of the physician toward his patient. A patient is very unlikely to sue a doctor whom he or she likes, even if there was obvious medical negligence. Therefore, it simply does not follow that we should use our initial impression of a doctor to gauge quality, since a surly doctor may be sued for malpractice more frequently yet be just as good as one with a friendlier bedside manner. If anything, this is one way that our "thin-slicing" fails us, but for some reason Gladwell uses this as a positive example.
There were a few other minor problems, but against the spirit of the book, I will withhold judgment until I read more, especially the promised section on how thin-slicing can go wrong. So far, though, I think the book's metascore is pretty accurate. (I didn't know metacritic did books. I'll have to contribute my reviews sometime.) I'll post a full review later.
The subject matter of the book is unconscious thought: not in the Freudian sense, but regarding our extraordinary capacity for making quick decisions and snap judgments with a minimum of information. More often than not, these intuitions turn out to be correct and it is often difficult or even impossible to discern how these decisions were made. Since they were entirely unconscious, the reasons for these decisions can only ever be determined in retrospect following a disproportionate amount of deliberation. Gladwell is interested in what happens in these few seconds when such an intuitive decision is made, as well as in the benefits and hazards of embracing this mode of deciding.
I started reading it tonight and, in the spirit of the book, I'll give my immediate impression. It's well written and enjoyable to read with its conversational tone and abundant anecdotes, yet it doesn't seem to dumb down the relevant psychological research. However, I think that Gladwell puts far too much emphasis on the purported counter-intuitiveness of this idea. Yes, it's kind of strange, but when he continually uses words like "mysterious" and expresses a sentiment that "we need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that--sometimes--we're better off that way," (p. 52) it is giving some potentially dangerous advice. It's true that Gladwell's thesis is not to favour impulsiveness all the time, and he discusses situations where "thin-slicing" (the act of appraising a situation using only the information immediately available in that thin slice of time) goes wrong in the later part of the book. But so far, his attitude toward this kind of thinking seems unduly favourable.
One example that I really didn't like is this: After discussing how the likelihood of a medical doctor being sued for malpractice can be reliably predicted by having uninvolved people judge a short audio recording of the doctor's interaction with a patient (with the content filtered out, preserving only intonation, pitch, and rhythm), Gladwell says this:Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk, if you have the sense that he isn't listening to you, that he's talking down to you, and that he isn't treating you with respect, listen to that feeling. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting. (p.43)
This advice is completely out of place and does not follow from the research just discussed at all! Gladwell just finished saying that the quality of care does not predict the likelihood of a malpractice suit: it is entirely contingent on the attitude of the physician toward his patient. A patient is very unlikely to sue a doctor whom he or she likes, even if there was obvious medical negligence. Therefore, it simply does not follow that we should use our initial impression of a doctor to gauge quality, since a surly doctor may be sued for malpractice more frequently yet be just as good as one with a friendlier bedside manner. If anything, this is one way that our "thin-slicing" fails us, but for some reason Gladwell uses this as a positive example.
There were a few other minor problems, but against the spirit of the book, I will withhold judgment until I read more, especially the promised section on how thin-slicing can go wrong. So far, though, I think the book's metascore is pretty accurate. (I didn't know metacritic did books. I'll have to contribute my reviews sometime.) I'll post a full review later.