In life, we sometimes make critical and trivial decisions based on our intuition. But how can we be sure our lack of deliberation serves our interests? Are we better off without a lengthy thought-process? Shoot from the hip more often? In ‘Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,’ Malcolm Gladwell explores these and other questions, providing insights on the quality, or lack thereof, of these brief yet critical and often trivial decisions.
At its core, Blink is about intuitive decision-making. Gladwell explores a plethora of situations where we have limited information yet our decisions formed based on those thin slices of data will often lead to accurate or beneficial outcomes. Therefore, decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and after long deliberation.
To illustrate his concept, he tells the story of Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps general known for his unconventional strategies. Van Riper became the leading figure during the Millennium Challenge 2002 military exercise, which was designed to explore critical warfighting challenges at the operational level of war that will confront United States joint military forces after 2010. Van Riper oversaw the hostile forces during the exercise. Instead of following established military protocol, he deliberately chose to rely on his intuition, experience, and simple but effective strategies. In contrast, his opponent chose to follow established military strategies, data-heavy analytics, and to rely on technology. Van Riper communicated with his team using basic methods like motorcycle couriers and coded signals, bypassing his opponent’s forces’ sophisticated surveillance tools. His quick, decisive actions—guided by gut instincts rather than exhaustive deliberation—allowed him to exploit his opponent’s forces’ rigidity and outmaneuver them, achieving unexpected victories in the early stages of the exercise. Gladwell highlights the paralyzing effects of over-analyzing, deliberation, and adherence to military hierarchy. Van Riper leveraged a decentralized command structure allowing his forces to act autonomously when his opponent expected coordination. However, Gladwell also cautions the reader to exclusively rely on intuition, but rather make context and skill-based decisions. Van Riper leveraged a combination of experience, skill and bravado to achieve his results. Therefore, context and skill-set of the decision-maker determine the speed at which a decision can be made.
And this contradiction is my main problem with Blink. By and large, it’s a book that builds a case for trusting your gut and making rapid decisions. On the other hand, Gladwell cautions against making rapid decisions depending on the context and the decision-maker. But, how can we refine our intuition to mitigate possible failure? How can we better identify context when thin-slicing advocates against analysis? And, when can we be sure we are sufficiently competent to be the decision-maker for the situation-at-hand rather than merely supremely confident? Blink leaves these questions largely unanswered. Gladwell oversimplifies the complexity around our cognitive abilities and the psychological depths of our biases to an extent that it contradicts him. Personally, I would have preferred fewer stories with more depth and explanation. In addition, I would have preferred a clearer structure outlining intuitive decision-making, long deliberation, and an overview of potential biases that prevent or support either.
I read Blink in parallel to Talking To Strangers, which helped to see the broader context of Gladwell’s thinking when he wrote these books. The latter struck me as more developed, thought-out, and polished. The former reads more like a raw compendium of psychological theories applied to real life stories. This density of everything makes it a formidable base for further idea exploration, but altogether it seemed capricious to ask the reader to switch context time and again. For example on the importance of contempt, he introduces the concept of the Four Horsemen of Marriage as theorized by American psychologist John M. Gottman. In other publications, Gladwell would offer a basic understanding of the concept of discussion before diving into a specific element of it, but in Blink, he rarely brings along the reader before moving on to the next concept. Gottman’s theory embraced criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling as the most destructive and biggest predictors of divorce and separation.
Would I recommend it? If you can get a copy for under $10, I’d recommend it. Any other price exposes Blink to other publications, e.g. Think Again by Adam Grant, which is more recent, clear and more comprehensive.
