Blink

 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking 

By   Malcolm Gladwell 

 

 

Preview 

Have you ever wondered if there is any basis for gut-feel or vibes?  You see someone for the first time, and without even exchanging a word, you know that you like, or dislike the person. We make such snap judgements all the time, in all walks of our life, and the interesting thing is, that it is not only limited to the people we meet, but also to situations that we come across. We often call it intuition, but do we really understand the science behind it? The book 'Blink', which deals with thoughts and decisions, that stem from the unconscious, helps us understand the workings of our mind when faced with such situations.  

 

About the Author 

Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist and bestselling author. He is known for books like Outliers, The Tipping Point, David and Goliath and many others. He weaves psychological and social research with interesting and amusing anecdotes to create a fascinating narrative. The book encourages us to look at the largely unexplored realm of the mind: the unconscious.  

 

What to expect? Learn to listen to your inner voice

First impressions are often accurate, and in many situations, making decisions quickly and with limited information is better than the slow and methodical approach. Studies have shown that people are able to make accurate assessments of a person's character traits like trustworthiness and kindness by just looking at them.  

In the case of the infamous 'Getty Kouros' statue at the Getty museum, despite being analyzed and certified by experts as genuine, most onlookers 'felt' that the statue was fake. The fakeness was established later, with information pouring in that the documents admitted as evidence of the statue's genuineness, were forged.   

While in complex and timebound situations, the unconscious mind can process significant amounts of information, which arguably leads to better decision outcomes; in situations which are not so dynamic and timebound, and in which the choices are simpler, a methodical and rational approach by the conscious mind is better suited. 

In this quid, you will learn: 

• Why you should trust your 'gut', more than you do 

• Why appearances matter and can sometimes kill. 

• Why "New Coke" failed. 

• Why women were not taken as serious musicians. 

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The Unconscious decision making 

We think of decision making as a conscious process, one in which we carefully think about the situation and make rational judgements, but is that correct? The truth is that most of the decisions in our life are governed by the workings of our unconscious mind, which we are unaware of, and over which we have no control! 

At the University of Iowa, researchers set up an experiment in form of a card game. The game had four decks of cards, two red and two blue. Each draw from the decks either won, or lost you some money, and the catch was that unknown to the player, the red deck contained all the cards which denoted heavy losses. As the game progressed, based on the observations the experimenters concluded that by the turn of the fiftieth card, the players started avoiding red cards without knowing why! By the eightieth card the players could figure out the hidden fact about those cards, that is, they could explain why they had been avoiding red cards. The most interesting thing was that the involuntary stress responses of players indicated that signs of stress were evident by the tenth card itself! Earlier than when they actually started unconsciously avoiding red cards, and much earlier than when they became aware of why they were avoiding those cards! The gamblers knew they knew, before they knew it!  

This study shows that quick judgment and cognition, take place in the unconscious mind. It is not that the unconscious mind works in isolation, untouched by external stimuli. Indeed, studies have shown that the workings of the unconscious mind are also influenced by external stimuli, just like the conscious mind. Because of this, our mind is always susceptible to 'Priming', which refers to the activation of particular memory associations in the unconscious mind of the subjects by external stimuli, to influence their performance in a task, just before undertaking it. For example, someone who sees the word 'black', will be faster to recognize the word 'night'. It has also been shown that black students, when asked to identify their race before a test, performed poorly on it, as compared to when they took the test without such identification. The negative stereotypes associated with their race and smartness, led to the priming of their minds and the subsequent poor performance. 

Fuzzy Logic and its power of prediction 

Can you predict if a married couple will still be married to each other fifteen years later? What if such a prediction can be made by watching the couple talk to each other for a while? The ability of our unconscious to quickly scan the facts around a subject or a situation and correlate it with the existing information in the mind to deliver a judgment, is fascinating. All this is processed and executed within the brain in a few moments, and with surprisingly little data or information. This ability to make accurate judgements based on limited information or a narrow window of experience is called 'Thin-Slicing'. It is essentially the capacity to recognize and make sense of patterns in large amounts of data or information, to make inferences about people, problems, or situations.  

 

Indeed, even the future stability of marriages has been accurately predicted by way of thin-slicing. The psychologist John M. Gottman, who has videotaped thousands of married couples as a part of his research, can predict the future stability of a marriage with high accuracy. He does this with the help of a codified system, which assigns a numerical value to a wide range of emotions expressed by the couple in their interactions with each other. Surprisingly, an hour of such a tape is enough for Gottman and his team to predict the future stability of a marriage with 95% accuracy, and even after analyzing just 15 minutes of tape, the prediction is accurate 90% of the times.  

The codified system developed by Gottman, is akin to the information processing of our unconscious mind, albeit far slower. The unconscious mind also identifies relevant information from loads of data, exactly like thin slicing, and can quickly decide on a course of action, or make a sophisticated judgement.  

High-Pressure situations and the boon of Spontaneity 

Is the valued approach of rational decision making suitable for all conditions? Since the unconscious by its very nature, operates stealthily, our perceived high value of sound judgements based on conscious information processing makes it hard to trust unconscious or intuitive thinking in pressure situations.  

In the US Military's experimental project of a war game: 'Millennium Challenge 2002', in which Paul Van Ripper, an ex-Marine was asked to play a critical role of a rogue commander, interesting conclusions were recorded. Van Ripper used old school techniques, and quick intuitive thinking, to come up with war strategies which ultimately defeated the opposition team, which was relying on a more rational, methodical, and tested approach.  

The result of this project indicated that in situations where the decision-making variables are constantly changing, one needs to be quick in making decisions. Van Ripper later found similarities between the functioning of the Wall Street traders, and war personnel. The traders operated in a chaotic ever-changing environment, just like soldiers. To test his strategy again, he deputed the traders to the simulated war game, without them having any practical knowledge of warfare strategies, and proved the importance of rapid cognition, when they performed exceptionally well, defeating a seasoned opposition. 

Welcome to the Dark side! How snap decisions can sometimes be wrong. 

Why is that the stereotype of the Tall, Dark, and Handsome man exists? Why is that most senior management positions are occupied by people who are tall? As is the case with some word associations which can influence behavior merely by listening to them, with physical appearances, a similar mechanism seems to exist. People are subconsciously wired to jump to conclusions based on certain physical traits that may be entirely unwarranted. A tall man with broad shoulders is likely to be thought of as a courageous leader only because of his physical stature. While sometimes the conclusions are correct, many times the unconscious prejudices which affect our minds, cloud our judgement.  

As history has shown, sometimes these bad unconscious judgements, can also enable a person to be elected to the office of Presidency. Warren Harding is thought to be one of the most incompetent presidents in the history of the United States. In his political career, he could never distinguish himself. He was not a particularly sharp man and was known for his colorful personal life. Despite him having none of the typical traits of a leader, like a distinguished service record or an incorruptible morality, he was seen as 'Presidential' because of his physical features. Harding ended up winning a resounding 404 electoral votes.  He remained popular during his presidential term and it was only after his death, when gradually one scandal after another surfaced, that his perception amongst the public, tanked. The case of Harding shows the dark side of quick unconscious judgement. We are often susceptible to bad judgements because of our own prejudices, biases, and unconscious decision making, just like we are in high-pressure situations to slow methodical decision making.  

Numerous incidents of Police shooting, as evidenced in recent years, show, that the unconscious mind can make bad snap judgements in a stressful situation, just because of prejudices and biases in our own mind. The mere possibility of a person carrying a weapon, combined with his or her race, or behavior, can sometimes lead to unwarranted consequences, which include death! 

There is more than meets the eye! Market Research can hide more than it reveals. 

The importance of 'context' cannot be overstated. Context is what differentiates situations, and thus its importance in decision making is critical. While over time the strategies and techniques developed for market research have resulted in better consumer insights, these are not always infallible to the bane of the wrong context! By the 1980s, Pepsi had been gradually chipping away at Coca Colas market share, despite Coke being more widely available and the Company spending tens of millions of dollars more on advertising. Pepsi ran an advertising campaign called the Pepsi Challenge, showing that blind tasters preferred Pepsi, to Coke. 

Cokes response to this quickly changed from initially refuting the results, to initiating market surveys of its own. The assumption they made was that if they had a wider network and more shelf space, the reason they were losing market share had to be the taste. Coke which had differentiated itself with its famed secret formula, began developing a new taste for its drink. A new sweeter version was developed and tested across hundreds of thousands of people, and the results seemed to show that this sweeter version scored higher on taste preference than Pepsi. Supported by the apparent infallibility of this result, Coke tweaked its flavor and announced the New Coke in response to Pepsi's challenge. The product was a miserable failure with thousands of people protesting against it, and the Company had to revert to its original formula with the Classic Coke, keeping the original flavor.  

Why did this product with extensive market research behind it, fail? The answer lies in context. The conditions in which the testing was done were not conducive to infer consumer preferences. In a sip test, in artificial settings, people tended to prefer a sweeter drink, whereas in home conditions and while consuming a whole bottle, the said preference did not necessarily hold true. While this does not imply that Pepsi ran a misleading campaign, what it does imply however, is, that the consumer preferences depended on the context. When asked to sip a drink, people preferred the sweeter one, while when asked to consume a bottle, people did not necessarily choose the sweeter flavor.  

 

 

The case of the 'Stereotype'. How cutting through the noise can change things. 

Since the prejudices and stereotypes influence behavior, to be objective, some of the information which bombards our brain, has to be cut out. To eliminate bad snap judgements, depending on the context, one has to make an effort to reduce irrelevant information consciously. 

For decades, women were not considered talented enough to be a part of an orchestra, and as it turned out, because of reasons which found their basis in unconscious prejudices. 

It was a matter of factual knowledge so to speak, that men were better musicians, after all, they had the lung strength and bigger hands to play the instruments more effectively. However, over a period of time, as the musicians began to organize themselves and fight for their rights, the method for auditioning musicians also changed. The musicians started to be identified with numbers rather than names, and screens were erected to separate the musician from the judging committee or the conductor. These simple changes resulted in more women being a part of the orchestras, since in these cases, the irrelevant information of gender, namely whether the musician was male or female, was eliminated, resulting in a more objective assessment.  This example shows the power of conscious ignorance of irrelevant information. 

Final Summary 

While the human brain can make quick and intuitive judgements as well as methodical and rational ones, both kinds of decision making have their pros and cons. It should thus be kept in mind, that the context, i.e., the situation, plays an important role, and it should dictate the method of decision making. For a gradually evolving situation, it is always better to adopt a rational approach, while a high pressure and a quickly changing situation should typically be tackled by intuitive unconscious processing.