Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

The introduction is a story of how a museum spent a lot of money to buy a statue they’d though and examined thoroughly to be authentic. But it was not and a lot of other experts that just saw it had a bad feeling the second they saw it. This book goes into that moment, that gut feeling, that hunch. Pretty interesting case studies.

Lot of topics that fascinated me from the telling if a marriage will survive to Eckman’s mind reading through the faces micro expression. From how so many superstars in music thought Kenna should get signed up but how the public didn’t give the same response (first impressions) to how Coke vs. Pepsi wars made coke mess up.

Note: Even though the book starts out on the positive side about this ‘thin slicing’ we and our deeper conscious does… it also has a lot of case studies of how we take the wrong meaning (like the Diallo case) and many more. Personally I found it… interesting, but not something you’d take too seriously because there are too many factors involved. Maybe the Marriage and Eckman’s face reading has become a precise science so that’s worth something.

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Contents:
– Introduction: The Statue That Didn’t Look Right

– 1. The Theory of Thin Slices: How a little bit of knowledge goes a long way.

– 2. The Locked Door: The secret life of snap decisions.

– 3. The Warren Harding Error: Why we fall for tall, dark and handsome men. (I personally fall for short and stumpy piglets ;o)

– 4. Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory: Creating structure for spontaneity.

– 5. Kenna’s Dilemma: The right – and wrong – way to ask people what they want.

– 6. Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The delicate art of mind reading.

– Conclusion. Listening with your eyes: The lesson of Blink.