Book Review - Blink
Malcolm Gladwell got a lot of positive press for his previous book, The Tipping Point, that analyzed social epidemics and the science of manipulation. I haven't read that one, but I did pick up his latest, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and found it fascinating.
The gist of it is that our subconscious makes up our minds with just a sliver of data. Some people are more effective at this than others, though. An example he provided was about a statue that the Getty Museum in CA purchased after their extensive analysis said it was from the sixth century BC. Several experts, however, could tell after one quick look that something just wasn't right about it. They couldn't pinpoint why, exactly. One said the fingernails looked too clean, another said it looked 'fresh'. After further review, the latter experts were proved correct and the statue was a fake.
Our subconscious doesn't always make the same decision our conscious mind would like us to, however. A test called the Implicit Association Test shows that we make connections more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds than we do between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar to us. Seems reasonable but it shows our stereotypical thinking. People taking the Work/Family IAT tend to associate career themes with men and family themes with women. People taking the Race IAT tend to associate bad/evil with African American and good/glorious with European American.
You can take some of these tests at Harvard's website.
There are a lot of interesting anecdotes and explanations in this book. I dig this stuff and, if you're into theories on how our minds work, I highly recommend Blink.
The gist of it is that our subconscious makes up our minds with just a sliver of data. Some people are more effective at this than others, though. An example he provided was about a statue that the Getty Museum in CA purchased after their extensive analysis said it was from the sixth century BC. Several experts, however, could tell after one quick look that something just wasn't right about it. They couldn't pinpoint why, exactly. One said the fingernails looked too clean, another said it looked 'fresh'. After further review, the latter experts were proved correct and the statue was a fake.
Our subconscious doesn't always make the same decision our conscious mind would like us to, however. A test called the Implicit Association Test shows that we make connections more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds than we do between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar to us. Seems reasonable but it shows our stereotypical thinking. People taking the Work/Family IAT tend to associate career themes with men and family themes with women. People taking the Race IAT tend to associate bad/evil with African American and good/glorious with European American.
You can take some of these tests at Harvard's website.
There are a lot of interesting anecdotes and explanations in this book. I dig this stuff and, if you're into theories on how our minds work, I highly recommend Blink.
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