Just before my recent trip to Maryland, I came across the non-fiction paperback "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. This was easily the most fascinating book I've read all year. In fact, if you're still reading this after my first two sentences, then you have an idea of what the book is about!
"Blink" is one of the few books I've read that deals with psychology and doesn't get so caught up in scientific terms that the reader gets lost. In short, "Blink" is about snap judgements- how we make them, why we make them, how they can be our best friends or our worst enemies.
Gladwell does a great job telling us stories about rapid cognition- from how one can instinctively tell something is wrong, even when we can't articulate why to how we can, unfortunately, give the benefit of the doubt to people strictly on the basis of looks to why most big business CEO's are tall.
Throughout the book, Gladwell introduces us to an assortment of psychologists whose studies make for fascinating reading. There's the researcher who can put a couple together for fifteen minutes and tell with over 90% accuracy which ones will still be married in fifteen years. There are the two scientists who have studied facial expressions to such a degree they can look at silent film for less than a minute and describe the people they see to a remarkable degree of accuracy.
If there is a shortfall in the book, it is that Gladwell underdelivers on the implied promise of telling us how we can improve our own rapid cognition, writing more in generalities than specifics. That aside, "Blink" has much to offer and I heartily recommend it. It also spurred me to buy Gladwell's first book, "The Tipping Point", which I will doubtless review in another couple of weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment