Blink - The Power of Thinking without Thinking | M. Gladwell

The book can be best summarized with the following quote:

"There are moments when our snap judgements - first impressions - can offer a much better means of making sense of the world"

In his book he is giving us a lot of examples on how snap judgements can be sufficient enough or event better than getting all needed information. There was on study where the professors could say after 15min if a married couple will be still together in 5 years or not (90% chance to be right).

Another interesting example came from the County hospital in Chicago. The hospital itself was horrible, but it was the only chance for uninsured people to get health care. The hospital had so many people queuing up everyday there was no way they go examine everyone for more than 2min. In order to get the best out of the situation they started a decision tree in order to systemize their answers. EKG ok, pain in the chest, fat, hard time to breathe, category 2, observation room and so on. In the end the decision tree system was actually way better and more accurate than the doctor opinion after 20min examination. It was even proved that a doctor makes a better decision without knowing if the patient is a men or women, if he or she is black or white.

Another example was that people who explain themselves (about a problem) ended up solving 30% fewer problems, chances having a flash are less.

So we need to respect the fact that it is sometimes better to know less as we are better of that way.

Further on in the book prejudgments are discussed, which can be tested with a Implicit association test (IAT) form the Harvard University - www.implicit.harvard.edu

Take for example this following question and answer the question who is the doctor:

"A man and his son are in a serious car accident. The father is killed, and the son is rushed to the emergency room. Upon arrival the attending doctor looks at the child and gasps, "this is my child" who is the doctor?"

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Answer: Who would have thought about it? The doctor is his mother.

The test from Harvard does similar things, you have to put words into categories, eg. Male and Career OR Women and Family and vice versa, bet which one you can do quicker? Same goes for Black and Good, and White and Bad, that takes most people longer than Black and Bad and White and Good... then imagine a snap judgment from a police officer is this a gun or a valet he is holding...

Also we can learn a lot more about what people think by observing their body language or facial expression or looking at their bookshelves, pictures on the wall or their bank account. There are hundreds of numbers to categorize your face - e.g. you have a beautiful 37, which means actually which muscles you are using to make this expression, once you get more into observing you have a really good idea if the person you are confronting is nervous, is lying, is happy, sad, afraid, in love with you etc. there these little signs you can learn pay attention to.

Overall I liked his other book - Outliers - The Story of Success - more than this one, as most of the things written in this book is common sense.

tj