Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell

BLINK: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell. United States: Back Bay Books, 2005. 320p

New College, New Job, New Boss, First Date! When everything is new, and we have no reference of past, we still can judge people and form opinions about them. But, are these judgements reliable which are taken in just first few seconds?  This book tells us the importance of judgements taken by us in the first glance or instant. It is written to convince us that decisions made very quickly are equally good as those decisions that are made with caution and lot of thought. It is for everyone who wishes to cultivate the power of knowing in the first few seconds, to become aware when to trust the instincts and when not to.  This book is a series of stories of psychologist, tennis coach, general and others who are good at what they do and owe a part of their success to some extent to the steps they have taken to shape their power of knowing. It is a self-help book which will help us recognise the power of snap judgements and also assist in becoming better decision makers.

This book supports the unconscious thought process where we decide without thinking. According to the author, these flash judgements can be educated and controlled. Many researchers are working on this theme. Dijksterhuis (2004) in his recent research supported that unconscious thinkers may make better decisions than conscious thinkers. Similarly, Gigerenzer, 2008, discussed how people often used shortcuts in a decision-making process. ‘Snap Judgement' is a book on a similar theme as Blink, written by David. E. Adler. It is about behavioural finance. According to this book, one should not rely on intuition in finance. It can lead to very bad outcomes for an individual as well as markets. This book stands out from all this research in its way of writing which is very simple and easy to understand.

The author has discussed his main ideas in the first chapter and elaborated those ideas throughout the book using various examples comprising different professions of people where they use blink decisions. The author says that most of the times when people judge in few seconds, they are unable to justify the reasons for their decisions because they think unconsciously without thinking deliberately. It talks about the adaptive unconscious, how it works and how reliable it is. He has given instances in which shows its  success as well as failure