Blink Critical Review

Chris Powell
Terra Williams
Writing Studio 101
October 20 2009

The Critical Review of Blink

Who would of ever imagined there could have been a book over the subject, that can only be summarized as, the power of thinking without thinking. Indeed, this paradox of rapid cognition is what writer, Malcolm Gladwell, has examined with both good in-depth analysis and storytelling. That aspect in Gladwell's writing is almost a contradiction to the book's theme. This is because what rapid cognition is, or thin-slicing, is that, we as people rely too heavily on systematic intuition to our general understanding of things. Instead, all we need is a short moment of experience, or a snap judgment, to comprehend an entity's full summation. I suppose with every innovative idea like rapid cognition, we as attentive readers require that level of clarity, that we are accustomed to by our own environment built on standardized thinking as the book suggests. While this book does tie together universal conceptions to one thesis idea, there are yet some pitfalls to the book's overall structure that hinders its full potential.
As the book opens with the art curators trying make out whether the kouros was a fake, this is where Gladwell begins to take reader from one anecdote to another. This played a key role in granting the authors voice a sense of omniscience, for which much of his stories are drawn out from an eclectic spectrum of sources. In one chapter, for example, he correlated with the way people tend to deter from new concepts at first glance, to the anecdotes of the Pepsi Challenge, Aerion chairs, and even the rock musician, Kenna. By being so diversified, the book can be embraced by a whole variety of people, both socially and culturally. And while he goes from anecdote to anecdote, Gladwell also reflects back on one previously mentioned idea that ties together with that given chapter's premise. This could be seen chapter 3, The Warren Harding Error, where while discussing how the first impression of the charismatic but inexperienced Warren Harding led people astray, Gladwell brought back the Susan and Bill case study where they were first perceived as a loving couple, only to be later divorced. Thus, what this reflection creates is the sense of unity and cohesion with the key concepts of the content.
The book was also enjoyable for how it played out very much as a psychologically driven assessment, and how our subconscious thinking intertwines with our full awareness of the world. This was evident in the Locked Door chapter, where Gladwell details how we are subjectively influenced by our environment, and how that resonates into our behavioral actions. To that, Gladwell inquisitively quotes, “much of the time we simply operating on auto pilot...how well we think and act on spur of the moment -are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize” (58). In a case study, for example, a group of participants were asked to complete a quiz that used subjective, interrelated wording. The outcome was that the subjects were mentally trained, or primed, to outwardly behave what the wording suggested to them (old age, cooperation, etc.). When asked whether they noticed anything different about the way they felt after the quiz, the participants said they felt emotionally unchanged. This to me was an extremely compelling observation, since it puts to question whether we have any power over our free will. Under that regard, the book succeeded in bringing insight into an elusive idea, that has yet to be explored.
Not only does he theoretically spell out what those concepts are, Gladwell also infuses some interactive psychodynamic assessments that offer an direct engagement with the reader to the text. One of which was the notorious IAT test, which was made to assess our attitudes toward minorities through the use of love/hate associative wording. The reader may get some surprising results upon completing this exercise. When taking the test himself, Gladwell (being half-African black) wrote down “On the Race IAT, I was rated as having a “moderate automatic preferences for whites.” (page 84). Most importantly, by having the reader interact with this form of experimentation, this elicits a more direct understanding, than what can be drawn out from an objective explanation of an obscure theory as the subconscious mindset.
While the use of anecdotes have brought depth and some validity to the subject matter, this was also a noted weakness to the book. Gladwell relied too heavily on these snapshots of disjointed events when articulating his analysis. It was as though he was trying to chunk up the book's content, as a way to make his thesis more comprehensible than it needed to be. There were even some points that I felt were inconsistent to the book's flow. One example of this, was the discussion of the Pepsi Challenge, where blind studies between Pepsi and Coke shown that the majority of taste testers preferred Pepsi over the latter. What really threw off this objectification was when Gladwell tried to justify the reason behind this preference outcome; to which was because the tasters were only given sips and not whole drinks. For much of the reading, he used this disputable claim as a way to make some informal clarification, that only distracts the reader from the chapter's key issue: that no one ever drinks Coke blind. Moreover, it would have been more feasible if Gladwell correlated the Coke Company's inconsideration of their soft drink's appeal strength with their customers to some other example that reflects that same thoughtlessness.
In addition, there were some examples that could have easily worked just as fine or even better if arranged in a different manner. In one case, Gladwell discussed how the subjective affluence of music can be compared to that of John Bargh's subconscious priming experiment. This gave me the impression that music was just as ambiguous as the equally abstract psychodynamic theory. I feel his comparison would have been more stronger if he had use the speed dating example from chapter two, The Locked Door, in replacement of the priming experiment. This would have made the inference that because we as people emotionally shift over time, our preferences with both dating partners and music would also change in accordance to that shift.
Also, the tonality of the book's theme and structure seem to repeat themselves. This in way made me feel as though I was reading in circles, rather than to progressively move on from one perspective onto the next. In particular, this was seen when Glad touched on the Diallo shooting incident, where New York policemen killed an innocent pedestrian at gun-point, for reason of suspicion. In my mind, I thought Gladwell was referring back to the Warren Harding chapter, where he discussed how thin-slicing could be misused to stereotype things. That wasn't the case, however, according to the quote on quote, Blink-esque jargon, which introduces the new concept of mind-reading: that we can instinctively recognize emotional attributes of an individual. To me, it was as though he just rephrased the term, thin-slicing, as a way to not sound like he was repeating himself (which evidently he did).
Another instance of how the book's structure repeats itself, was the way some of the chapters have ended. In the Kenna's Dilemma chapter, for example, it concluded that Kenna did in fact earned some later success within the music industry (despite having been scrutinized by the poor public reception). This was the similar case for the conclusion of the Paul Van Ripper's Big Victory chapter, where it reveals that when the US reevaluated their war strategies, it entailed the winning of their Blue Team over the once victorious Van Ripper's Red Team. In both cases, Gladwell hindered the severity of his chapters' tone, by concluding them with a contrasting resolution. It would have been best if he had left them out from the text, as a way to support the arguments that were being made.
Overall, the book's use of anecdotes helped widen the spectrum of what thin-slicing can encompass in. By the same token, because Gladwell overused this singular aspect of formulating an analysis, it also what made the reading come across as being both redundant and self-indulgent. The book could have been a more stronger piece, if it was written in the same manner of the Locked Door chapter, where it was more insightful and bold in response to its complex theme of the human subconscious. In the end, while the book's structure and tonality was somewhat off-putting, the book can still be an enjoyable read for those who wishes to reflect their own perception on reality.