Blink: the power of thinking without thinking, Malcolm Gladwell. New York: Little, Brown. 2005. ISBN: 0–316–17232–4

Abstract

BLINK: THE POWER OF THINKING WITHOUT THINKING, Malcolm Gladwell. New York: Little,Brown. 2005. ISBN: 0–316–17232–4.Review by Robin M. Hogarth, ICREA & Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain and Paul J. H.Schoemaker, The Wharton School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.Malcolm Gladwell’s (2005) Blink is a good read and will probably become an international best seller.Gladwell writes in an engaging fashion, is well informed and few match his ability to tell interesting storieswith colourful characters. In Blink, Gladwell addresses an issue that is central to the field of judgment anddecision making, namely the ability of people to make ‘snap’ judgments that are accurate or, in Gladwell’sphrase, to ‘thin-slice’.Gladwell states up front that Blink aims to achieve three explicit ‘tasks’: (1) ‘to convince you of asimple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and delib-erately’ (p. 14), (2) to identify ‘when we should trust our instincts and when we should be wary of them’(p. 15) and (3) ‘to convince you that our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and con-trolled’ (p. 15).Gladwellisnotabehaviouralscientistbutpresentsscientific(andother)evidenceinan authoritativeman-ner such that non-scientists would view Blink as reporting on the science underlying his thesis. The Econ-omist,for example,placed Blink at thetop ofits list of bestselling science books (Vol. 375,No. 8420, p.79).Limiting ourselves to Gladwell’s own stated tasks (i.e. goals), it is appropriate to ask whether the evidenceGladwell cites meets his own goals. Also, we wish to comment on the overall merits of the book for beha-vioural decision making (BDM) and beyond.By our count, Gladwell’s evidence consists of approximately 25 scientific studies, 12 case studies, 22anecdotes and a couple of informal studies, all spread over some 250 pages. Contrary to academic books,Gladwell does not present his arguments in a structured, logical flow where, for example, the evidence issummarised at key points to demonstrate that the data indeed support the thesis being developed. Instead,his style is to engage the reader with a series ofintriguing cases, characters, anecdotes and snippets of scien-tific evidence. Figuring out what this all means is the reader’s task. With Gladwell, the pleasure of readinglies more in savouring the journey rather than the final destination. Thus, although highly entertaining, formany readers there could be much confusion as to the conclusions that Gladwell means to reach. For thisreason, we deem it important to make explicit how we perceive the structure and content of the book.In the Introduction, Gladwell motivates the thesis that blink or snap judgments can be more effective thandeliberate thinking. In Chapters 1 and 2, he provides evidence (plus some great stories) that thin-slicing canbe effective in different contexts and that humans lack conscious awareness of their own judgmental pro-cesses. Anyone familiar with the relevant scientific literaturewould mostly agreewith what is said up to thispoint.TheonlychargeonemightmakeisthatGladwellhasselectedatypicalcases,suchastheinstantrecog-nition bycertainart expertsthat an ancient marble statue (kouros) purchasedbythe J.Paul Getty MuseuminCalifornia is a fake. He fails to mention, however, that art experts have often failed to recognise fakes for