Must Read: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

I love to read books on the plane. It's really the only time when I have no interruptions, no cell phone, no email, no internet. I can read a book without feeling bad that I'm not doing something else. On my way back from Santa Monica I read the most fabulous book, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

Blink is about the power of our unconscious and rapid cognition. A quote that perfectly sums up the book's unintentional premise is by Sigmund Freud: "When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature." This appears to be true from Blink. Gladwell provides very everyday and easy to understand examples about why our best decisions about the most complex of problems are best made by instinct, often in a split second. He also shows us how the more information we have about something can actually bog our mind down and make us less accurate. He explores a wide range of topics from love and marriage to the difference between coke and pepsi. He discusses our unconscious bias towards things such as race, gender, and even height. One that may be interesting to Beth - gender bias in classical musical, particularly brass instruments and how that problem has been somewhat solved. The lawyer in me also loves the fact that he provides endnotes and I can look up each of the studies he cites to in order to make my own assessments.

There are three topics in the book which are of particular interest to me. The first is his discussion about the mathmatician turned marital researcher, John Gottman. Gottman is able to predict with about 93% accuracy whether or not a couple will get divorced. Shocking, isn't it. Based on watching a few minutes of videotaped footage of a couple having a conflict discussion - and in the book's example the couple were just talking about their dog. He evaluates not only what they are saying, their body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice all with exact scientific precision. We may see a happy couple having an amusing disagreement about their dog, but he sees unspoken cues that detect contempt in a marriage. Signs that he can even see in newlyweds. The second concerns racial bias and a test called the implicit association test or IAT. You can take the test at www.implicit.harvard.edu. The IAT can test for many kinds of biases, but the most popular one is for racial bias. The results are often disturbing and almost entirely unchangeable. You can literally take the test everyday and get the same result. Of course, there are factors that could change your perspective as the book points out. The last area is mind reading, or more accurately reading someone's facial expressions. There is a very scientific way of doing so, in fact about 500 people in the world are certified to do so. And they can do so with astonishing accuracy. It is no surprise that Gottman has employed much of the "mind reading" principles into his area of study on marriage.

Anyway, if you haven't read this book, please do. I think it is the kind of book that engenders lively conversation.