Blink
The Power of Thinking without Thinking
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
BBB Library: Psychology and Strengths
ISBN: 9780316172325
Editorial Review
Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work-in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of “blink”: the election of Warren Harding; “New Coke”; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren’t those who process the most.
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Wisdom to Share
This notion of the unconscious is thought of as a kind of giant computer that quickly and quietly processes a lot of the data we need in order to keep functioning as human beings.
The only way that human beings could ever have survived as a species for as long as we have, is that we’ve developed another kind of decision-making apparatus that’s capable of making very quick judgments based on very little information.
The mind operates most efficiently by relegating a good deal of high-level, sophisticated thinking to the unconscious. The unconscious handles the basic needs relating to hunger, eating, surviving, body maintenance, reproduction and feelings.
The adaptive unconscious does an excellent job of sizing up the world, warning people of danger, setting goals, and initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner.
Unconscious decisions are made when we meet someone for the first time, when we interview someone for a job, whenever we react to a new idea, when we’re faced with making a decision quickly and under stress; we use that second part of our brain.
A person watching a silent two-second video clip of a teacher he or she has never met, will reach conclusions about how good that teacher is, that are very similar to those of a student who has sat in the teacher’s class for an entire semester. That’s the power of our adaptive unconscious.
There are moments, particularly in the business world, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making profits from new opportunities.
Entrepreneurs who can make use of their unconscious decision-making abilities are poised to be more successful than those who rely only on their slower and conscious decisions.
The first task of Blink is to convince you of a simple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.
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