Executive Reading: May

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Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Reviewed by Margaret Teichart and Oleg Kaganovich

Rapid cognition is what we know about a thing, person, place or idea within the first two seconds of encountering it. It’s a phenomenon within all of us and it has many names, including first impression, snap judgment, gut instinct and even prejudice. The downsides of such “ways of knowing” have been well publicized; the upsides are worth closer examination. And that’s what Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of “The Tipping Point,” does in his latest business/sociology book “Blink.”
    Drawing on real-life examples and cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, Gladwell illustrates how the difference between good and bad decision-making has nothing to do with how much information we have, but upon which details we choose to focus. We live in a world, he says, that assumes that “the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it.”
    Consider, for example, how many times we seek to corroborate our decisions, or look before we leap, or try never to judge a book by its cover. Gladwell suggests that by dismissing all snap judgment as impulsive (at best) or prejudicial (at worst), we are essentially missing opportunities.
    One of the many terms he introduces is “thin slicing” — the unconscious ability to recognize patterns based on very narrow sample data. We see it in action in psychology, police work, hospital triage and even speed dating.
    Resoundingly, he makes the point that instinct has no bearing on whether the decisions we make in response are good or bad. But there is, of course, a dark side to rapid cognition that makes us susceptible to leaping to conclusions.   
    Focusing on the wrong cues leaves us vulnerable to “the Warren Harding Effect” (i.e., voting for a candidate who looks “presidential” but has none of the qualities you’d value in a leader), or worse.   One chapter illustrates a tragic failure through the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea who was shot 41 times by New York police because, among other things, they misread a “terrified” innocent bystander for a “terrifying” intruder.
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