Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink:
The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Review by Tisha Nemeth-Loomis
Recently there has been a noticeable palaver filling the air in Cleveland, and you might have heard it: the increased communication among business professionals, educators and politicians, with some resultant strategic alliances, partnerships, and collaborations newly infused into the city. While these conscious decision-making efforts and conversations between divergent groups in Cleveland have increased, can these conscious-driven discussions transcend to a new level? Could we learn from the underpinnings of unconscious intellect, and perhaps mine it for answers within the underrated and often overlooked instinctual unconscious? I'm talking about our capability for spontaneous thinking.Psychoanalysts such as Jung, Freud, and Lacan are well known for their theories on the unconscious mind and how it operates, and contemporary thinkers are also recognizing its motivity and the indelible mark it brands upon our inner selves. Now there are more reasons to familiarize ourselves with its veiled realms, as humans can and do surpass thinking in the immediate reactions of the conscious, instead carrying out decisions based on our instincts. For those who remain unconvinced, Malcolm Gladwell (author of the pop literary phenom, The Tipping Point) offers riveting and readable examples in his new book, Blink (Little, Brown and Company) addressing the hotly debated topic of cultivating our unconscious reactions.
Making split decisions in the blink of an eye, in a knee-jerk or instinctive gut reaction, is highlighted in Gladwell’s book, giving a nod toward progressive thinking and alternative answer-mining of the intellect. Perhaps our guts are leading us in the right direction when it comes to listening to our inner selves; it's clean and immediate, while the normal process of decision making is often prone to a cluttered “over thinking” and rational analysis. Blink dares you to think beyond the conscious din of thoughts, citing research that points to the human ability to make decisions on an unconscious, instantaneous level. Here, the unthinkable option is presented: sometimes it is preferable and advantageous to go with our “heart instead of our head.” Gladwell provides gripping research and well-written stories that confirm what we never would've expected: Gut feelings can be an untraditional, legitimate way of executing real thinking.
Gladwell takes the reader on an educational journey that begins with a lesson in simplicity; when we tap into our unconsciousness for information, it is a means of “thin slicing,” or condensing information the brain has stored in its shadowed recesses, then allowing it to emerge and confirm what we perhaps have already known. Thin slicing recognizes our unconscious ability to find patterns in situations and behaviors, examining slices of experiences we've had; it's the brain's way of participating in an accelerated process of gathering information to make decisions when there is little or no time to deliberate. Blink disseminates pattern recognition and intuitive judgment, while including fun blips about the power of the glance (or the “coup d’oeil”), and a sharp investigation into unconscious cognition with Gladwell’s straight forward, storytelling style. Ultimately, his findings support what we may be afraid to admit - our unconscious knows what it knows, and the power of unconscious cognition carries weight within our individual decision formation.
Readers will catch onto the book's less-is-more philosophy when it comes to thinking. While we sink deeper into paralysis from over-analysis, the brain is not only working overtime, but also processing information we assume has been forgotten, or relegated to unusable portions of our brain. Not so, according to Gladwell. Instead, he cuts open the center of the book's most pressing question: Why trust ourselves to make decisions without over-thinking the situation? Too much information, Gladwell suggests, can get in the way when we occasionally may only require the powers of instinct and its incontrovertible message: maybe the power of thinking and its best ideas lie in manifold levels just below our everyday thoughts.
from Cool Cleveland senior editor Tisha Nemeth-Loomis
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