Blink: A Semi-Contrite Review

blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell is a book about first impressions. As Gladwell puts it:

It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

I read the first chapter and really hated it. The result was the preview called Blankety Blink!. Since I have now read the whole book, and have a different opinion, I think I ought to post it.

What I hated about that first chapter was that I thought that Gladwell was misinterpreting his data, and emphasizing the wrong points. I still think that that judgement wasn't crazy, but the rest of the book gives a broader perspective. For one thing, after starting with an example where first impressions beat out considered judgements, he goes on to deal with cases where those snap judgements are poor or even catastrophic.

The great strength of his book is in the examples, of which I will consider one below. I still think that he tries to fit all these examples in a rather too Procrustean bed, but that's not altogether a fault either.

One test of a good book, or almost any work of art, ought to be that it challenges our prejudices in some way. It ought to be an argument. My first reaction to an argument is always to challenge it - I believe in truth through debate. New ideas need to be subjected to trial by combat and Gladwell's book started some good fights in my head.

One chapter in the book is concerned with the dramatic effect that introducing screened auditions had on orchestras. In a screened audition, the musician auditioning is concealed from the judges (typically the conductor and other senior orchestra members). The auditions are also arranged so that there are no other cues to the identity to the musician auditioning - no names, no conversation.

The result, predicted by very few, has been the explosive increase in the number of women in orchestras. It turns out that even musicians at the highest levels harbored a number of unrecognized prejudices that didn't fit the facts: the idea that women lacked the lung capacity and strength to play the trombone, for example.

Gladwell wonders if the same model couldn't be extended to other areas, and mentions trials, in particular. Blacks charged with drug crimes are up to fifty times more likely to go to prison than Caucasians. Can anything like the screened audition be introduced to criminal law? There are obviously some practical difficulties, but the question of how to deal with this kind of prejudice is a pervasive one.

Women in science and engineering, and particularly on physics faculties, are a case in point. Unfortunately, the practical difficulties are great. Physicists travel a lot, and are likely to have met plausible candidates for top jobs. Those qualified to judge a candidate have almost certainly read the candidate's papers.

My conclusion is that judging a book by its cover, or even first chapter is not necessarily a good idea. I recommend blink. The paperback version of the book I read also contains a sample chapter of his other book, The Tipping Point, and boy do I have a bone to pick with it!