What is “Blink” about?
“It’s a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a
house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, “Blink” is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and,occasionally, really good.”
“If [John Gottman, Univ of Wash Prof of Psychology] analyzes an hour of a husband and wife talking, he can predict with a 95% accuracy whether the couple will still be married in 15 years… One of Gottman’s findings is that for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a given encounter has to be at least 5 to 1… He tracks the ups and downs of a couple’s
level of positive and negative emotion… once they start going down, toward negative emotion, 94% will continue going down. It is an indication of how they view their whole relationship… [Gottman] has found that he can find out much of what he needs to know just by focusing on what he calls the 4 Horsemen: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt… If Gottman observes one or both partners in a marriage showing contempt toward each other, he considers it the single most important sign that the marriage is in trouble.”
(Blink, Pp 21-32)
I will stick to my first impression of Blink - Lessons from this great (!) book can make positive changes in your decision-making behaviors.
- The surprising quality (and importance) of spontaneous decisions (”thin slicing”).
- Better judgments can sometimes be executed from simplicity and frugality of information (Too much information can even interfere with the accuracy of a judgment)
- Simple tools that you can implement, in order to control & eliminate the hazardous effect of prejudices and stereotypes on our judgment.
Yours,
Opher.
p.s - To test yourself on your associations with age, gender, or race, go to www.implicit.harvard.edu. It’s a good way to test your stated beliefs with your unconscious beliefs. You may be surprised…
2 responses so far ↓
dan // Dec 8, 2006 at 15:43
Outraged by the downward spiral of American intellect and culture, Michael R. LeGault offers the flip side of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling phenomenon, Blink, which theorized that our best decision-making is done on impulse, without factual knowledge or critical analysis. If bestselling books are advising us to not think, LeGault argues, it comes as no surprise that sharp, incisive reasoning has become a lost art in the daily life of Americans. Somewhere along the line, the Age of Reason morphed into the Age of Emotion; this systemic erosion is costing time, money, jobs, and lives in the twenty-first century, leading to less fulfillment and growing dysfunction.
Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can’t Be Made in the Blink of an Eye.
How To Achieve Good Relationship Marketing | Opher Brayer’s Blog // Jan 13, 2007 at 12:56
[…] I read in the book “Blink” that most doctors being sued for mal practice are the less kind and empathic ones to patients, rather then the ones that are empathic but actually make mistakes. The reason for this is that patients do not want to sue people they like. A research presented in the book showed that empathic doctors spend, in an average, three more minutes with a patient then the ones that are less empathic. Also, the empathic doctors listened more to what patients ask, and answer with respect to that. This emphasized how mare empathy and three additional minutes make so such difference. […]
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