When you were in school, how long did it take to decide how good a teacher was? A class, A month, OR A year? The psychologist Nalini Ambady once gave students three ten-seconds video tapes of a teacher - with sounds turned off. She found that students had no difficulty at all coming up with a rating of teacher’s effectiveness.
Then Ambady cut the clips back to five seconds, and the ratings were the same. They were remarkably consistent even when she showed the students just two seconds of videotape. Then she compared these snap judgments of teacher’s effectiveness with evaluations of those same teachers made by their students after a full semester of classes, and she found that they were also essentially the same.
A person watching a silent two-seconds video clip of a teacher he or she has never met will reach conclusions about how good that teacher is that are very similar to those of a student who has sat in the teacher’s class for an entire semester. That’s the power of our adaptive unconscious. This book talks about the same. It talks with various practicle examples. It talks about some real experiments.
We all have done something similar in our lives. Do you remember when you bought your favorite shirt, jeans or book? How long did it take to decide? May be just a glance. Or just two second? An yet in that short span of time it influenced your decision. The look, the design - a flurry of thoughts and your perception. Aren’t you curious to know about what happened in those two seconds? If you are - this book will help you to resolve your curiosity.
We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it. When doctors are faced with a difficult diagnosis, they order more tests, and when we are uncertain about what we hear, we ask for a second opinion. And children learn - Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. We only trust conscious decision making. But, there are times when only haste doesn’t make waste. Our snap judgments can make more sense. The first task of Blinkis to convince you of a simple fact - decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.
Joshua Correll, a University of Chicago professor who researches racial bias, stereotyping, and prejudice, taught a class on Blink (Course Number: PSYC 24500). The course description read as follows.
"This small seminar is a reading and discussion of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, which addresses a variety of psychological topics (e.g., impression formation, close relationships, racial bias). Each week we compare sections of this book to the experimental literature on which they draw, critically considering Psychology (sscd) 475 these diverse areas of academic research and issues involved in communicating such work to the general public."
Very soon we are going to see a movie based on the concept of this book. Writer and director Stephen Gaghan is making this movie and Leonardo DiCaprio is going to be the star.
I would like to mention few remarkable comments from different publications.
The New York Times says, "Trust my snap judgment, buy this book: you’ll be delighted".
Observer says, "Brilliant.. the implications for business, let alone love, are vast".
This book has become one of best reads till now. And at last, I would repeat Graham’s word -read this book with devotion, honesty and LOVE.