Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff
There is SO much I can say about this book that I won't. You will have to experience it for yourself. For me, it reinforced many thoughts that bounce around in my head: ideas, notions, and theories I formed in the happy, sad, glad, and oh-so depressing stages in my life. Rapid cognition, analyzing few critical pieces of information instead of weighing on years of evaluation, “thin-slicing” - Sometimes we make the best decisions when under pressure and with less noise crowding our judgement. Listen to yourself. “Don't think, blink.”