Utilizing case studies as diverse as speed dating, pop music, and the shooting of Amadou Diallo, Gladwell reveals that what we think of as decisions made in the blink of an eye are much more. Free download or read online Outliers: The Story of Success pdf (ePUB) book. The first edition of this novel was published in 2008, and was written by Malcolm Gladwell. The book was published in multiple languages including English language, consists of 309 pages and is available in Hardcover format. PDF On Oct 1, 2005, Robin M. Hogarth and others published Blink: the power of thinking without thinking, Malcolm Gladwell. New York: Little, Brown. ISBN: 0-316-17232-4. In The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell changed the way we understand the world. In Blink he changed the way we think about thinking. Outliers will transform the way we understand success. MALCOLM GLADWELL is the author of the #1 international bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink.

1. Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Pdf
2. Summary Of Blink By Malcolm Gladwell
3. Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Pdf David And Goliath
4. Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Summary
5. Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Sparknotes

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) is Malcolm Gladwell's second book. It presents in popular science format research from psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious: mental processes that work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information. It considers both the strengths of the adaptive unconscious, for example in expert judgment, and its pitfalls, such as stereotypes.

1. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Kindle edition by Malcolm Gladwell. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
2. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) is Malcolm Gladwell's second book. It presents in popular science format research from psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious: mental processes that work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information.

Summary[edit]

The author describes the main subject of his book as 'thin-slicing': our ability to use limited information from a very narrow period of experience to come to a conclusion. This idea suggests that spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones. To reinforce his ideas, Gladwell draws from a wide range of examples from science and medicine (including malpractice suits), sales and advertising, gambling, speed dating (and predicting divorce), tennis, militarywar games, and the movies and popular music. Gladwell also uses many examples of regular people's experiences with 'thin-slicing,' including our instinctive ability to mind-read, which is how we can get to know a person's emotions just by looking at his or her face.

Gladwell explains how an expert's ability to 'thin slice' can be corrupted by their likes and dislikes, prejudices, and stereotypes (even unconscious ones). Two particular forms of unconscious bias Gladwell discusses are implicit association tests^[1] and psychological priming.

Gladwell also mentions that sometimes having too much information can interfere with the accuracy of a judgment, or a doctor's diagnosis. In what Gladwell contends is an age of information overload, he finds that experts often make better decisions with snap judgments than they do with volumes of analysis. This is commonly called 'Analysis paralysis.' The challenge is to sift through and focus on only the most critical information. The other information may be irrelevant and confusing. Collecting more information, in most cases, may reinforce our judgment but does not help make it more accurate. Gladwell explains that better judgments can be executed from simplicity and frugality of information. If the big picture is clear enough to decide, then decide from this without using a magnifying glass.

The book argues that intuitive judgment is developed by experience, training, and knowledge. For example, Gladwell claims that prejudice can operate at an intuitive unconscious level, even in individuals whose conscious attitudes are not prejudiced. One example is the halo effect, where a person having a salient positive quality is thought to be superior in other, unrelated respects. The example used in the book is the Warren Harding trap. Because Warren G. Harding looked so much like a respectable person in 1899, Henry Daugherty was impressed and helped him become president of the United States of America, while Harding himself did nothing extraordinary for his political career. ^[2]

Gladwell uses the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, where four New York policemen shot an innocent man on his doorstep 41 times, as another example of how rapid, intuitive judgment can have disastrous effects.^[3]

Lessons learned from this book:^[4]

• Disdain in a relationship is an indicator that the relationship won´t last very long as John Gottman found out.
• You can easily judge a persons´ personality if you have the opportunity to see their living room for about 15 minutes as in the experiment of Samuel Gosling and his students.
• Respected medical doctors who respect and listen to their patients' needs are less likely to get sued. See the research of Alice Burkin and Wendy Levison.
• Prejudices and false first impressions may be overcome through positive examples of people all over the world and experience.
• If a manager gives power to his coworkers, they can act more independently and faster while at the same time being more innovative. This is shown through Paul van Riper.
• If people are asked to explain their impressions and experience, they are less likely to remember what they felt. The act of describing an experience with words overrides part of the ability in the brain to remember the feelings as Jonathan W. Schooler showed.

Research and examples[edit]

The book begins with the story of the Getty kouros, which was a statue brought to the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. It was thought by many experts to be legitimate, but when others first looked at it, their initial responses were skeptical. For example, George Despinis, head of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, said 'Anyone who has ever seen a sculpture coming out of the ground could tell that that thing has never been in the ground'. Gradually, the argument for the legitimacy of the kouros' provenance fell apart. The letters tracing its history turned out to be fakes, referencing postal codes and bank accounts that did not exist until after the letters were supposedly written. However, experts to this day are unsure whether the kouros is authentic or not. The museum notes that 'anomalies of the Getty kouros may be due more to our limited knowledge of Greek sculpture in this period rather than to mistakes on the part of a forger.'^[5]

John Gottman is a researcher on marital relationships whose work is explored in Blink. After analyzing a normal conversation between a husband and wife for an hour, Gottman can predict whether that couple will be married in 15 years with 95% accuracy. If he analyzes them for 15 minutes, his accuracy is around 90%. But if he analyses them for only three minutes, he can still predict with high accuracy who will get divorced and who will make it. This is one example of when 'thin slicing' works.^[6]

The studies of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who created the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), indicates that a lot of 'thin slicing' can be done within seconds by unconsciously analyzing a person's fleeting look called a microexpression. Ekman claims that the face is a rich source of what is going on inside our mind and although many facial expressions can be made voluntarily, our faces are also dictated by an involuntary system that automatically expresses our emotions. ^[7] On example of how movements of the face result in emotions is shown in an experiment from Paul Ekman, Wallace V. Friesen and Robert Levenson. They asked their test subjects to remember negative or burdening experiences. Another group was asked only to make faces that resembled negative feelings like anger, sadness and the like. Both groups were connected to sensors which measured their physiological reactions (puls and body temperature). Interestingly the latter group showed the same physical reactions as the first group.^[8]

In a study done by Fritz Strack and his colleagues students had to watch a movie. One group did so with a pen between their teeth while the other group had to hold the pen with their lips. The first group interpreted the movie funnier than the second, because the muscles responsible for smiling were used and then made the brain release hormones related to being happy. ^[8] These studys show that facial expressions are not only the result of emotions but can also be their cause. ^[8]

Reception[edit]

Richard Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago and a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, argues that Gladwell in Blink fails to follow his own recommendations regarding thin-slicing, and makes a variety of unsupported assumptions and mistakes in his characterizations of the evidence for his thesis.^[9]The Daily Telegraph review writes, 'Rarely have such bold claims been advanced on the basis of such flimsy evidence.'^[10]

In Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye (Simon and Schuster, 2006), Michael LeGault argues that 'Blinklike' judgments are not a substitute for critical thinking. He criticizes Gladwell for propagating unscientific notions:

As naturopathic medicine taps into a deep mystical yearning to be healed by nature, Blink exploits popular new-age beliefs about the power of the subconscious, intuition, even the paranormal. Blink devotes a significant number of pages to the so-called theory of mind reading. While allowing that mind-reading can 'sometimes' go wrong, the book enthusiastically celebrates the apparent success of the practice, despite hosts of scientific tests showing that claims of clairvoyance rarely beat the odds of random chance guessing.^[11]

Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow which speaks to rationality's advantages over intuition, says:

Malcolm Gladwell does not believe that intuition is magic. He really doesn't..But here his story has helped people, in a belief that they want to have, which is that intuition works magically; and that belief, is false.^[12]

In an article titled 'Understanding Unconscious Intelligence and Intuition: Blink and Beyond', Lois Isenman agrees with Gladwell that the unconscious mind has a surprising knack for 'thinking without thinking' but argues that its ability to integrate many pieces of information simultaneously provides a much more inclusive explanation than thin-slicing. She writes:

Gladwell often speaks of the importance of holism to unconscious intelligence, meaning that it considers the situation as a whole. At the same time, he stresses that unconscious intelligence relies on finding simple underlying patterns. However, only when a situation is overwhelmingly determined by one or a few interacting factors is holism consistent with simple underlying signatures. In many situations, holism and simple underlying signatures pull in different directions.^[13]

Topics mentioned[edit]

• Aeron chair produced by Herman Miller
• Keith Johnstone's book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
• Millennium Challenge 2002 and Paul K. Van Riper
• Pepsi Challenge and New Coke
• The Goldman Algorithm^[14]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Greenwald, Anthony G.; et al. (1998). 'Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test'. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 74 (6): 1464–80. CiteSeerX10.1.1.489.4611. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1464. PMID9654756.
2. ^Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963- (2007). Blink! die Macht des Moments. München: Piper. pp. 78ff. ISBN9783492249058. OCLC180710604.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
3. ^Cooper, Michael (1999-02-05). 'Officers in Bronx Fire 41 Shots, And an Unarmed Man Is Killed'. The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
4. ^Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963- (2007). Blink! die Macht des Moments (Ungekürzte Taschenbuchausg ed.). München: Piper. ISBN9783492249058. OCLC180710604.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
5. ^'Statue of a Kouros (Getty Museum)'. Getty.edu. 2009-05-07. Retrieved 2013-05-03.
6. ^Gladwell, Malcolm (2005-01-07). 'Excerpt from 'Blink''. USA Today. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
7. ^Gladwell, Malcolm (2007). Blink. Back Bay Books. p. 206. ISBN978-0-316-01066-5.
8. ^ ^abcGladwell, Malcolm (2011). Blink! Die Macht des Moments. München: Piper Verlag GmbH. pp. 202f. ISBN9783492249058.
9. ^Posner, Richard A. (2005-01-24). 'University of Chicago Law School > News 01.17.2005: Posner Reviews Blink'. Tnr.com. Retrieved 2013-05-03.
10. ^Skidelsky, Edward (2005-02-06). 'Good intuition takes years of practice'. The Daily Telegraph. London.
11. ^LeGault, Michael (2006). Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye. New York. ISBN9781416524663.
12. ^Charlie Rose Show broadcast February 28, 2012 at 27:05. USA. 2012. Archived from the original on March 15, 2012. Retrieved 2012-03-16.
13. ^Isenman, Lois (2013). 'Understanding Unconscious Intelligence and Intuition: Blink and Beyond.' Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 56 (1): 148–166 p. 160. http://people.brandeis.edu/~lisenman/PBM.2013.pdf
14. ^Qamar, A (Oct 1999). 'The Goldman algorithm revisited: prospective evaluation of a computer-derived algorithm versus unaided physician judgment in suspected acute myocardial infarction'. American Heart Journal. 138 (4): 705–9. doi:10.1016/s0002-8703(99)70186-9. PMID10502217.

External links[edit]

Quick Summary: In Blink, Gladwell proves that your intuition can often produce better decisions than extensive analysis. Your intuition can cut off all irrelevant information and focus only on the key factors. On the other hand, your gut instinct is also affected by all sorts of various factors such as biases that can lead you to bad decisions.

The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

After breaking the ice with The Tipping Point (2000), Malcolm Gladwell cemented his status with Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, published in 2005.

Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Pdf

This is neither a theoretical book nor a collection of essays. It is a mélange of true stories and research findings, brilliantly woven together by Malcolm Gladwell.

He relies on these real-life examples to show both the bright and the dark side of our decision-making.

As the author himself stated, Blink is divided between incredible success stories and tragic failures that have one significant thing in common: our process of thinking.

UNCONSCIOUS’ RULES / BLINK: THE POWER OF THINKING WITHOUT THINKING

“Blink PDF Summary”

Malcolm Gladwell’s main task is to convince us that “decisions made very quickly can be as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately”.

The second task: to identify when conscious decision-making works better and when the unconscious one does.

The third task: to convince us that “snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled”.

Gladwell examines the psychology of making sharp decisions followed by quick thinking.

As an illustration of this point – he illuminates how the subconscious can sometimes adopt a biased attitude and affect the way a person interprets a situation.

GetNugget’s book summary co-joins the race that people should establish a positive Mindset and behave with utmost sincerity.

Malcolm Gladwell gives a whole new perspective of the judgmental notion and explains why that isn’t such a good idea as many people think.

Gladwell supported by GetNugget introduce a modern idea familiar by the name of “thin slicing”.

The theory consists of utilizing small slivers of information about a particular individual and collect them in order to get or form a collective opinion.

According to his standards, that concept is highly efficient when it comes to building relationships which are prone to breaking.

A perfect example would be exploring normal teenage relationships, and marriages. This book summary consists of many insights into various theories and ideas that are beneficial for any individual.

We consider ourselves rational beings at least ever since the Greeks introduced the concept. We rely on logic – the scientific approach and we seek the answers that make rational sense.

What about the emotions?

What about the gut feeling? As it turns out, in many situations we are better off trusting our intuition.

The unconscious mechanism behind our quick and quiet processing capability works in mysterious ways, but its power is enormous. As Malcolm Gladwell put it:

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.

Malcolm Gladwell also argues that often we don’t know how we know something. “Our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can’t look inside that room. Guided by experience a person can become expert”.

However, this is not merely a problem, but “a central part of what it means to be a human”. In the end, the job of our conscious mind is to pick on signals coming from the hidden, unconscious part and check their validity.

We would gain a lot more if we’d paid more attention to those signals.

Our interactions with the world, especially the first impressions, are ruled by the unconscious.

When confronted with little time we need to make snap judgments. In these situations, our prejudices and deep beliefs come to light.

We must train our unconscious mind to make better snap judgments and Malcolm Gladwell argues that this is in fact possible. It is, as he puts it, “the gift of training and expertise”.

Blink
These are just a few short ideas out of a book packed full of insights into how our mind works. But what makes Blink truly beautiful is still the storytelling.

When diving into the myriad of short stories, the reader discovers, for example, how J.Gottman can predict the future of a marriage with 90% accuracy by simply watching a couple talk.

How many years does he need to reach a conclusion? Just 15 minutes and no magic.

He’s got a system and he learned precisely what to look for.

Psychologists Tomkins and Ekman proved that mindreading is not a myth, but an ability that can be taught.

They even created a taxonomy of facial expressions and proved that emotions always come to the surface. It also works the other way around.

How could our facial expressions determinate our emotions? The baffling answer is in Blink.

I could go on and on with the examples, but you should read the book in order to understand these stories in context.

Key Lessons from “Blink”

1. Don’t rely on logic
2. Stay true to what you believe in
3. At the end of the day, all you have is your attitude towards life

Don’t rely on logic

Logic can distort reality and give you a taste of the bitterness that follows our footsteps.

All of the stories illustrated in this book manifest how randomness can affect the decision-making, and that’s something you wouldn’t want to take for granted.

Stay true to what you believe in

There is no better sight than looking yourself in the mirror each morning, knowing that you are one step closer to your goals.

Don’t “sell” your agenda, stand your ground and fight against anything that tries to blockade your progress.

At the end of the day, all you have is your attitude towards life

It’s not a question of belief as it concerns your way of life. How you handle tough situations and one-way-streets?

To be in a win-win situation, one must be fully prepared to make exceptions and that means to sacrifice everything that is keeping you away from the only thing that matters – peacefulness!

Like this summary? We’d Like to invite you to download our free 12 min app, for more amazing summaries and audiobooks.

“Blink” Quotes

Our Critical Review

Blink is a book concerned with the smallest of the details. It creates a movie out of the first few seconds of our thinking process. And believe me, the movie is a masterpiece!

New Extended Blink Summary

Blink is yet another of Malcolm Gladwell’s greatest hits. It was published in 2005, following the mega-hit Tipping Point. The book explores psychological and neurological research to understand how human intuition works.

Are you having trouble understanding the excess information around you?

Maybe your intuition can help you make better and faster decisions.

You probably already use your intuition much more than you realize; even when you think you’ve analyzed a situation rationally and gotten to some logical decision, you’re probably just recalling your initial instinct.

Summary Of Blink By Malcolm Gladwell

The Statue Which Didn’t Look Real

Your brain relies on two strategies for making decisions in any situation, one of which is conscious information analysis.

It is based on weighing the advantages, disadvantages and possible impacts of a certain subject so that a rational decision about what you have to do is reached.

That is a rational processing, but it occurs slowly and consumes a lot of brainpower.

The second strategy is quick as a snap and consumes little energy.

Your intuition is fast as lightning and can make decisions extremely fast, based on instinct rather than in-depth analysis.

Intuition allows the brain to work in situations where a decision needs to be made fast, and there is no time for in-depth analysis.

Many people tend not to trust their instincts and make decisions based solely on in-depth analysis.

However, it is interesting to note that research proves, in many cases, quick decisions are often better than those taken after in-depth analysis.

Gladwell cites an example in which a museum in 1983 purchased an ancient Greek statue.

Initially, the museum suspected the authenticity of the piece, but after more than a year of investigations decided to buy it.

The investigation was so extensive that the statue was sent for testing in Greece by Greek specialists.

Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Pdf David And Goliath

Three years later, in 1986, the museum was certain that the statue was original and decided to put it on display.

But again, experts quickly began to doubt its authenticity.

The first was historian Federico Zeri, who observed with a quick glance that the nails of the statue looked strange. He could not explain the reason, but he had a bad feeling about the statue.

Subsequently, several other experts had similar doubts, and the museum began a second investigation, finding that the statue could possibly be fake.

The statue remains to this day, but with a different plaque, which says “Year 350 before Christ OR a modern fascination.”

In many situations, there are patterns the unconscious recognizes faster than the conscious and logical mind.

It is precisely in these moments that we must rely on our quick decisions. There are decisions and perceptions that occur in the blink of an eye, and you need to be aware of them.

Slice To Decide

To decide, it is often easier to focus on some aspects of something or someone and use this slice to create a larger or more complex opinion about it. Ps3 gameshark codes.

Gladwell calls this Thin Slicing technique. The technique relies on using our unconscious ability to find patterns in situations and behaviors based on small experiences.

The psychologist John Gottman, for example, became known for being able to determine with a 90% correction rate if a marriage would perpetuate.

He was able to do this with only 15 minutes or less of observation.

He trained his assistants in his laboratory to understand couples’ facial expressions and feelings communicated through body language and thus be able to make effective predictions.

Gottman’s research is interesting because it states that human beings do not need to know much about someone to understand their personality.

Gladwell also cites other examples of this “slicing”, the ability to have an understanding of a small volume of information.

For example, a stranger can identify a person’s personality through a look in their room in just 15 minutes.

It is often more effective to focus on some important facts and block the rest. We can make hasty judgments because our unconscious is incredibly effective in this process of isolating information.

The important thing is to know how we choose the information we will discard and which we will keep during the slicing process.

One must be careful, after all, the choice of the wrong piece of information can lead to disastrous results.

Is Your Mind Capable Of Guessing Without You Understanding The Reason?

The answer is yes, and Gladwell proves it, by describing an experiment conducted by a group of scientists at the University of Iowa, involving a card game.

In front of the participants, there were four decks, two red and two blue.

Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Summary

Each card in these decks made the participant who drew it win or lose money.

Participants also used polygraphs to detect their level of stress during the experiment. What the participants did not know is that the cards in the red deck were more damaging than those in the blue deck.

The red deck had cards with rewards, but mostly with huge losses, while the blue deck had cards with good, stable rewards.

The participant began by taking random letters from the four decks. Around the fiftieth time, he realized that the red deck was worse than the blue deck and he was betting on the latter.

It was noticed, however, from the analysis of the results of the polygraph that the participants already showed signs of stress when turning the cards from the red deck much earlier, around the tenth time.

Thus, scientists have discovered that their subconscious understands the game long before their rational brain.

Your body and your intuition knew which was the best pack, but your mind takes much longer to assimilate.

We Cannot Find Rational Explanations For Our Intuitions

Many tend to rely on facts and figures above feelings and intuitions, and that is why they usually come with logical explanations for their hasty judgments after doing them.

Humans are similar to the art experts who discovered the Greek statue forgery.

Our intuition tells us that something is not right or that we can trust someone, but we are not able to articulate why it happens.

As an example, Malcolm cites Vic Braden, one of the greatest tennis coaches who was able to predict double faults with high accuracy.

Before the player started playing, he would say: ‘he will double fault.’ However, Braden was tormented by the fact that he did not know how he could predict these plays.

He thought about his foreboding, but he could not conclude as to why he was so good at guessing.

In another example, in an event where couples were coming to meet each other, people had to describe the qualities they were looking for in the ideal partner.

But when it came to choosing, they were attracted to people who did not have any of the attributes they listed.

When asked what attracted them to their partners, the participants were not able to explain why they were intuitively against the very lists they had created.

Unconscious Associations Change Our Ability To Decide (And May Lead To Error)

The unconscious influences our actions all the time, and this can be the root of errors and prejudices.

Most people, for example, unconsciously and automatically associate attributes such as being white and tall with qualities like power and competence.

Even if we know that men with these characteristics are no more competent than blacks or short-statured people, we form these associations unconsciously.

Several surveys prove that it’s easier to be professionally successful if you’re a tall, white man.

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One proof of this kind of problem is what happened to Warren Harding. He was elected President of the United States after World War I because his constituents simply believed he looked presidential.

However, he clearly did not have the necessary skills and history records him as one of the worst presidents.

Emotional Expressions Reveal That A Person Is Thinking

Scientists have shown that emotional expressions are a universal phenomenon.

People in all regions of the world can recognize a facial expression of happiness, anger or sadness.

However, some people are blind to non-verbal signals: they only understand information transmitted explicitly and are not able to read faces of other people.

That is the case with children with autism, for example. But in fact, non-autistic people can become temporarily autistic due to stress and pressure.

When we are stressed, we tend to ignore indirect cues such as facial expressions and devote our full attention to the information in question.

This situation may, for example, cause you to make wrong judgments based on your emotional situation.

To avoid these pre-judgments, you have to slow down and reduce stress in your environment.

From a certain level of stress, the logical thinking process stops completely, and people become unpredictable.

Consumers Don’t Always Know What They Want

Companies do market research to try to identify new opportunities to create products and thus attract more customers. However, in many cases, a search is unable to predict what will actually work and what the consumer wants.

A notorious example is a research cited by Malcolm, in which Coca-Cola performed thousands of taste tests compared to Pepsi and found that its consumers preferred the taste of Pepsi.

This study led Coca to launch a new product, with a new flavor that had gone very well in the tests, the “New Coke”.

The new Coca-Cola was widely rejected, and in a short space of time, it was withdrawn from the market. Strange, isn’t it?

The reason the test failed so dramatically was that consumers tasted only the taste of the product but were not exposed to all the elements of the Coca-Cola brand that help shape customer perception.

Coca-Cola is not just a taste, but an experience that mixes flavor, packaging, commercial. Simplifying the experiment to evaluate only the taste compromised the ability to understand people’s perception, after all, no one takes soda with eyes closed.

Only taking a sip is different from drinking the whole bottle. Sometimes a sip may taste good but a glass may not.

Another interesting point is that when companies launch innovative products, consumers tend to evaluate these products negatively at the start of their life cycle.

Consumers need time to get used to new products, and only after some time, they begin to like them.

Experiencing new things is the key to breaking down prejudices. Gladwell quotes research which proves that Americans have more trouble associating positive qualities with the word “black” than with the word “white.”

This prejudice exists even in the black population. That is because the unconscious learns through observation.

The American elite is almost entirely made up of white people, and through this observation of how the world works, people develop the unconscious association between white skin and success.

Therefore, prejudices influence our behavior at all times and we must find and work them.

To overcome these prejudices, you have to find ways to change these unconscious attitudes and the only way to do this is to try new things and expose yourself to new situations.

Also, to avoid bad judgments, you need to ignore irrelevant information.

Avoid The Mental Traps

Unconscious prejudices and stereotypes can strongly influence your decisions. You must consciously protect yourself from conflicting information that you can plant in your brain.

Denying our rash unconscious judgments is crucial to ensuring we make better decisions.

If you are an executive at a record company, for example, the physical attributes of a potential artist can taint your judgment.

In this case, it is ideal that you create your filters to collect only relevant information and thus make the best decision.

For example: In The Voice, judges sit facing the audience to ensure that the only information they have about a candidate is their voice.

If they like what they hear, they push a button and then face the candidate to choose who they want on their team.

Ignoring the candidate’s visual aspect helps select the best talent. Think about your life, find areas where you have multiple biases and analysis limitations because of biases and prejudices.

Think about how you could filter these elements from your judgment and you will be able to make better decisions.

Final Notes:

In the blink of an eye, we can make important decisions, using our accumulated experience and the thousands of years of evolution of the human being. In this book, Malcolm wants you to learn 2 main things:

Decisions made quickly can be as good as long and highly deliberate ones. Not always a well thought out, an analytical decision is the best answer to a situation and if we look for agility, an intuitive decision may be the answer;

How to know when to trust your instincts and when to take care not to fall victim to them. Instant judgments can be learned and controlled, and you can mentally slice the issues. Your intuition can be your friend! Just understand how it works.

12min tip: Did you not like Blink’s ideas and want to see an interesting counterpoint? Read this article: http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com.br/2006/08/blink-nonsense-of-thinking-without.html

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Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Sparknotes

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