Book Review/Summary: Blink

Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html

This is a book about the relatively new field of psychology called rapid cognition. The psychology of first impressions, or what happens in the first few seconds you are experience someone or something new. It is a very interesting and well written book. It teaches that first impression often can be trusted and often under certain circumstance make for BETTER decisions than long drawn out decision with more information. How can that be true? This book describes an event where an art collector buys a statue for millions after months of examination by scientists, and is told by an art expert who looks at it for a few seconds that it is a fake. How did he know it was a fake? He didn't know at the time it just looked too "fresh". Its true under these circumstances

1. Only relevant data is used - consciously or unconsciously you know what to look for
2. Additional information ignored - You don't allow extra, related but irrelevant information to bias your decision no matter how much that information seems to point in a certain direction. Example the quickest and most accurate formula for diagnosing whether someone is having a heart attack in triage situation does not involve weight, age, or sex.
3. Don't fall back on stereo types - warren Harding became president because he looked like he would make a good president, tall, dark. According to historians was one of the worse presidents in American history.
   
4. Correct circumstances- The Pepsi Challenge - Pepsi wins a Sip Test, Coke wins if a whole can is drank. Which is more relevant to what consumers continue to purchase?
   
5. Not under too much stress- At high heart rates cognitive abilities break down. Training can reduce stress.
6. Not Rushed

Other interesting tidbits

• How a doctor treats his patients is the best predictor of malpractice law suits, how good a doctor is almost irrelevant.
• People with Autism can't do mind reading, i.e. reading faces and body language
• IAT Tests which test how fast you make associations. The most interesting is race https://implicit.harvard.edu/. Most blacks and whites test to being able to more easily associate whites with positive things than blacks. Unless the person is primed first with thoughts of positive black role models such as Martin Luther King.
• People will pay more for ice cream in round containers because they believe it "tastes" better.
• People will pay 10 cents more for a can because a picture of parsley on the label makes it "taste" fresher.
  
• Taking surveys - Asking questions in areas where consumers don't usually think will "lead the witness" into second guessing their first impressions and often invalidate the results.
• Putting a map and store hours on a flyer may help a person figure out their schedule and when and where they will be during the event. This can increase attendance.
  
• People confuse something completely new and different as something they do not like
• The music industry because of its market testing methods is inherently biased against anything new and different
  
• The Pepsi Challenge - Pepsi wins in sip tests, Coke when a person drinks a whole can
  
• During WW II radio operators could recognize and track troop movements by German troops by recognizing the "fingerprint" or style of particular German Morse code operators.
• Improv comedy uses the rule of agreement. If you start a story and a person poses the question always answer yes, to keep the story going