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I mentioned before about enjoying The Tipping Point, which is the other book by Malcolm Gladwell. It was good, but I think I like Blink better because it has a more coherent theme that I’m more familiar with. Blink is a book about unconscious decision-making and information processing, what Gladwell calls “thin slicing” and what psychologists for years have called “decision-making under uncertainty.” Yeah, “thin slicing” is certainly catchier, even if it is a new name for an old concept.
But it’s more interesting than it sounds. Like The Tipping Point, Blink is rife with thought-provoking ideas and anecdotes. Gladwell describes how thin slicing relates to marketing new musical acts, racism, success in car sales, police brutality, hiring decisions, dating, New Coke, and more. Gladwell manages to be both erudite and entertaining through it all, though I did think that the part about unconsciously reading facial expressions dragged on a bit. Still, it’s a great primer for understanding how our minds are hard wired to process information quickly and efficiently given that making every little decision on the basis of exhaustive research and logic would make our head pop right off our shoulders. If you like Blink, I’d strongly recommend following it up with Influence: The Art of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, which is an even better book with a slightly wider scope.
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