Book Review

    Blink, by Malcom Gladwell, is a non-fiction work which examines the assumptions and conclusions that people reach each day through a series of unconscious decisions.  How are these opinions and decisions made without us conscious of them?  This book gives the reader incredible insight to the inner workings of the sub-conscious by providing several examples of instant “gut” feelings and judgments.  Gladwell highlights the first impressions and reactions of art experts, marriage counselors, consumers, political leaders, military leaders and musical experts to illustrate the complexity and still vastly unexplored field of unconscious reasoning.  The idea of unconscious re

“The part of our brain that leaps to conclusions…is called the adaptive unconscious. This new notion of the adaptive unconscious is thought of…as a kind of giant computer that quickly and quietly processes a lot of the data we need in order to keep functioning as human beings…. Whenever we meet someone for the first time, whenever we interview someone for a job, whenever we react to a new idea, whenever were faced with making a decision quickly and under stress, we use the [adaptive unconscious].”

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking believes that we live in a world that instills in us the idea that the quality of a decision is directly related to the amount of time and deliberation that went into making it.  His book aims not only to debunk the theory that more time and deliberation will lead to a more sound choice, but also to affect a change in the way people regard their unconscious and make decisions.