Leadership+Book+Summary

=Technology/Leadership Book Summary = = =  //Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking // By Malcolm Gladwell As children growing up, we are told that careful thought should be put into decision-making, because we can’t judge a book by its cover. But in his thought-provoking book written in 2007, //Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking//, Malcolm Gladwell discusses how, in a split second, our brains can skim over the available information presented to us and make instant determinations of the situation. The person making the determination is so completely unaware of the process that just took place that they are unable to explain how the new knowledge was obtained. Gladwell refers to the portion of the mind that makes these determinations as the ‘adaptive unconscious’ (p. 15), a new direction in the study of psychology. In Chapter 1, Gladwell uses the term “thin-slicing” to refer to the first two seconds after a person is introduced to a new situation, and the way that the human brain can take a small slice of that situation, process the information, and draw correct conclusions without any conscious thought having taken place. Thin-slicing is very different from the ‘live and learn’ type of decision making process in which we have experiences, then later think back about what we learned from them to determine what we will do in the future. Instead, the adaptive unconscious works as more of a “giant computer that quickly and quietly processes a lot of the data we need in order to keep functioning” (p. 15). On page 13, Gladwell discusses an experiment in which subjects were given the task of quickly turning over different sets of cards that either earned or cost them money. The subjects’ sweat glands in their hands were monitored throughout the experiment, and results showed that their bodies decided long before their minds which cards would benefit them. It took, on average, about 50 card turns before they developed an idea about which cards would earn money, and about 80 cards before they could consciously explain the difference. But the subjects began exhibiting sweaty palms after only turning over ten cards, because their brains had already taken in the information and established a pattern related to which cards earned and which cards lost. Because the stress reaction was picked up by the unconscious mind, the subjects changed their behavior and began choosing the earning cards more often. At New York University, another experiment called ‘priming’ (p.42) was conducted, in which test subjects were given lists of groups of words to read, then told to quickly make sentences from the seemingly random grouping. The test subjects were unaware that the groupings had scattered words suggesting some sort of behavior, such as politeness, rudeness, or old age. After completing the experiment, the subjects unconsciously exhibited the behavior they had been ‘primed’ to exhibit by the words in the lists. In Chapter 3, Gladwell also points out the downside to the unconscious decision-making process, and calls it the “Warren Harding Error” (p. 55), in which we let ourselves get carried away by how great something or someone looks on the surface that we don’t bother to dig deeper, often with dire consequences. This error is the reason for stereotypes and prejudice. Even if someone believes that they do not judge others based on stereotypes, research shows that we have prejudicial ideas pounded into us on a daily basis. Prejudice works on both a conscious and unconscious level, only one of which we can control (p. 62). The basic question behind Blink is, when should we let ‘thin-slicing’ guide our judgment? Gladwell refers to Sigmund Freud, who said that he always found it best to make minor decisions consciously, and to let the unconscious make decisions on the most important matters, like choosing a mate, because those decisions should be based on “the deep inner needs of our nature.” (p.180)