blink

I read blink by Malcolm Gladwell for bookclub way back in November. The whole point of blink is that our subconcious minds make judgements and decisions very quickly and without any help from our concious mind. In the blink of an eye. Sometimes this can be a good thing, like our mind telling us to step out of the way of an oncoming truck. Sometimes we make better decisions when they are made quickly and with little information.

On the other hand, sometimes our snap judgements can get us into trouble. Remember New Coke? CocaCola came up with New Coke in response to all the taste tests Pepsi was conducting and winning. Before New Coke was released it was beating Pepsi in taste test after taste test. But it flopped. Why? Because it turns out that one or two sips of a sweeter pop tastes better, but when asked to drink a whole can of the sweeter stuff, it's not so good.

This book goes into all kinds of different scenarios of good and bad snap judgements. And there are some other interesting things as well. There is an interesting chapter about reading people's emotions by watching their facial expressions. It does get a little technical (I never considered that a face could be so technical) but it was pretty fascinating.

This book was much more interesting than I had anticipated and I learned some good things. One thing I did not like: there are a few swear words, bad ones! (watch out for chapter 6) They are not all over the place, and they are usually only used when quoting someone, however I think the author could have come up with different people or different experiences to use as examples. Would I reccomend it? I don't know. It's one of those "It's really great, except for ..." kind of things.