Chapter Summary Of Blink By Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell incorporates many real-life situations and studies into Blink (2005) in order to describe the accuracy of the snap judgements people tend to make without realizing it. Gladwell begins with a story about a kouros, or a statue of a posed naked man. While analysis at the J. Paul Getty Museum seemed to prove its legitimacy, many trained archaeologists had a feeling that the statue was a fake. As it turned out, the kouros was a fraud. Gladwell draws the reader in with this interesting introduction and sets a baseline for the format of the rest of the book. In the first chapter, he explains “thin slicing,” or using small bits of conversation or experience to come to a conclusion, using stories about marriage therapy, specifically

Chapters two and three discuss “priming,” or the use of visual cues to invoke certain emotions or responses in people, focusing in on tests that suggested people subconsciously hold racial stereotypes. Gladwell also mentions how the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VPC) plays an important role in our decision making. He then brings up a counter to thin slicing, describing how our snap judgements can still be inaccurate, especially when innate prejudice is involved. For instance, Harding is considered an awful president by many, yet he was elected because people felt he looked presidential. Chapters four and five show how spontaneous decisions are not necessarily random, citing the example of Paul Van Riper preparing for middle eastern conflict. He effectively combined snap judgement with deliberate thinking to prepare the best strategy when practicing combat scenarios, and he ultimately won during the practice run. However, the army ended up relying more on rational thought alone despite its failure in combat training. This ties the second half of the book to the first by taking a look at both snap judgement and logical thinking and explaining how the two together are most

Gladwell takes a look at racism in the police force and discusses how it could be attributed to “temporary autism.” In a case where four police officers killed Amadou Diallo, an innocent man, it is possible that in the stressful situation, their heart rates increased drastically and put them in a state of panic, preventing them from thinking cognitively, just as someone with autism lacks the ability to read social cues. This situation stands out the most above the others mentioned in the story because it captures how our split-second decisions can create such a severe impact, whether that impact is positive or negative. Diallo, an innocent man, was murdered because he seemed suspicious, showing a failure of snap judgement by the four officers and leading to a controversial case. While it is impossible to truly determine if racism was a key factor or if it was just the state of panic that caused Diallo’s death, it does reveal how there are many factors to consider when studying the thought process and how the brain is infinitely