Blink: Summary

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell makes a number of arguments that call a bigger one: the human mind and all its various functions process at such a fast speed that its body can’t react quickly to render those processes physically. Gladwell introduces the concept of “thin-slicing” in Blink, the innate ability to gauge an environment and draw out conclusions at almost lightning-fast speeds. This ability leaves some humans concluding certain points that they can’t initially explain why or how. Through this, Gladwell insinuates that humans see the brain in a dated fashion and it has much more potential than we’ve ever thought. The idea of a “gut feeling” isn’t fantasy (though it is a crude colloquial term in Gladwell’s mind), but an actual ability the human mind has, an ability that’s employed quite often. Gladwell dissects human behavior unconventionally, citing the brain to be a puppeteer and the body to be the puppet, rather than the conventional “computer system” analogy people hold for the human body. The brunt of environmental processing is done solely by the brain, with the human body acting as a tool for enhancing the processes and/or carrying out consequences of certain processes. There are times when the brain is moving too fast for the comparatively archaic body can’t keep up, and those moments are what we know as instinct or the “gut feeling.” Through and through, Gladwell constantly asserts that the brain is of supernatural importanced compared to the stature we hold it in now, gut feelings are nothing but the norm, and that there needs to be a paradigm shift in how we approach study of the brain, human environments and human behavior/sociology.

1. “We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for” (69).
2. “When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex” (179).
3. “We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction” (71).
4. “Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend- or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet- understands this implicitly; you can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face” (37).
5. “Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way. I think that approach is a mistake, and if we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgements. We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that — sometimes — we’re better off that way” (52).