Malcolm Gladwell - Blink

Gladwell's second book was a must after reading his first (see my posting!). This book is much like the first. Couple of studies, ante dotes, and a general review (outline) of what Gladwell is trying to get across. The basis behind this book is that we have two decision making tools in our brain. One is the conscious thinking part and the quiet unassuming unconscious one. Blink is the theory that the unconscious one can be a useful tool if you learn to listen to it occasionally.

Things I found interesting:

page 56: Priming - A professor performed a test asking one group to think about smart people or teachers and the other asked a group to think about hooligans. The professor then asked the groups trivia and the ones thinking about the smart people answered 55.6% of the questions while the other group only 42.6%! By preparing the mind or priming it you can make it work for you. While a more mortifying result of this priming is that if African Americans are asked to put their race down on the GRE vs another group that is not asked then the group having to choose a race were shown to not perform as well on the test due to stereotyping. Wow!

Gary Klein Sources of Power

Page 111: A quote, "Conducting a thoroughly rational and rigorous analysis that covered every conceivable contingency yet that analysis somehow missed a truth that should have been picked up instinctively" When I read this I thought of baseball managers. Especially that argument between playing the numbers vs. playing a gut feel. Are managers who do the gut thing better off? Are the statheads so concerned with numbers they lose sight of that unconscious thought? How would one test this? Gut vs Stats - is their some way to look at games and determine when a manager used a stat matchup vs a gut matchup?

Page 141: Successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and intuitive thinking. In good decision making, frugality matters (i.e. not too much data!)

Page 218: Interesting talk on autistics and the fact they can't read faces...wonder why sometimes I have trouble looking at people when I talk?

Page 264: Quote of the book..."Have we come to confuse information with understanding?"

Page 268: Freud had it right...minor decisions should have the pros and cons looked at but for the vital stuff we should go with our unconscious gut feel.