Blink - Malcolm Gladwell. Review on Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

*About Malcolm Gladwell:

Malcolm Gladwell presently works as a staff writer for the New Yorker after he moved from his job as a science and business writer at The Washington post. Apart from Blink, he has been the author of other bestsellers such as The Tipping Point and The Outliners. Gladwell usually writes about the stuff most people take for granted and leave unnoticed.

He writes about subtle social norms and popular tendencies and prejudices than the so called social ‘issues’. His works are usually a conglomeration of myriad events, interviews and stories distilling them into an analysis of behavioral science. In this sense, one might call him to be an astute learner and lover of popular psychology. Gladwell is also a notable speaker on social commonalities in diverse fields of study. In 2005, was listed by the Time among the 100 most influential people in the world.

About BLINK:

If you were an expert at something, and possessed the ability to tell exactly the attributes and consequences of an instance from your area of expertise- in an instant; then perhaps, you know entirely what Gladwell talks about in his 265 page compilation. Blink is a book about snap judgments, instincts and the very first few moments of your gauging and understanding a situation, an artwork, a food type, a business strategy or for that matter anything under the sun.

The book opens with an interesting account of a Kouros; a particular style of a male statue predominant in ancient Greece. The Kouros in question was ascertained to be authentic ancient Greek by a panel of scientists and geologist at the Getty museum after 14 months of study, who were planning to buy the artwork for a price quoted at $10m. However, all this fell apart, and quite spectacularly so, when Fredrico Zeri, an eminent art historian trashed the statue to be a ‘fake’ because he felt an ‘intuitive repulsion’ towards it. One after another, other historians concurred with Zeri. A subsequent inquiry into the various purchase orders, bills, letter and bank accounts revealed that indeed, the work was a fake.

So there we are; Intuitive Gut feel over 14 months of scientific study. The Kouros story lays the foundation for the book which then goes to explains in detail the “Theory of Thin Slicing”. Further into the book, Gladwell also explains the perils and ‘buts’ associated with these intuitive reasoning and judgments. Case in point is the chapter called the “Warren Harding Error”, where the people of the United States fall for the charms of a tall, handsome but thick, Warren Harding who went on to become their 29th president.

The author cites numerous examples, ranging from finding the right taste or colour for Coca Cola and margarine to the formulation of military strategies in the Millennium Challenge. He uses these well and develops his case for the pros and cons of rapid cognition or think without actually thinking-the ability of our brains to subconsciously learn over time and process abstract information quickly. Very quickly. In the BLINK of an eye.

Criticism:

The language of Blink is lucid and absorbing. The book has an intriguing capacity to keep the readers reading which inherently comes out of the impressive journalistic skills of the author. Blink provides an interesting mix of science and intuition which is fun to read and (but) at times even provocative in its bold and sweeping generalizations. The book has an element of flamboyance which Gladwell creates with great prowess and effectively communicates his ideas to the reader. While this is the book’s obvious strength, it is also its greatest weakness. The book sometimes feels like paparazzi of scientific and psychological inference. The inferences are massive but the basis is extraordinarily fragile. If one keeps the flamboyance away, it quickly reduces to a collection of stories/events which are somehow, meant to prove and validate a much larger perspective of the human psyche. His accounts of various experiences, events etc are afterall, not experiments in the true sense. The book also lacks substantially in coherence of proposition. Gladwell makes the point that your thin slices are good resources for you to depend on, but not always. Reading through the book, you realize that faulty thin slicing can even get an innocent bystander killed. He never mentions when or how to trust these instincts. The book even feels self contradictory at times, especially in the chapters about the Love Lab and the Bronx firing episode.

In toto, Blink makes a fascinating read which is informative yet fun. The content is dense and intellectually stimulating, but Gladwell makes sure the reader is not exhausted. However, the book, in no way, can claim itself to be anywhere close to being critically analyzed or scientifically written. The reason is simple. Bold claim, flimsy evidence.

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