Final Thoughts

As the book comes to an end, one final story is addressed regarding the integration of women into the world of the Philharmonic and other orchestras. The story details how auditions for gaining acceptance into an orchestra went from a visual as well as auditory to just an auditory method. In the former, men were predominantly chosen for placement with almost no women ever making the cut. After a screen was placed up blocking the view of the auditioner, women began to be chosen. It goes to show a bias that existed by visual interpretation of an auditory experience. I found this to be quite a powerful example of the senses creating bias in judgment as many of the other stories of the book showed.

In the final pages of the book, the author points out the power that we have as people in our abilities to make judgments. The author makes note that sometimes we are unknowingly mentally overwhelmed with information when the information that we need to make a sound decision is much less than we think we need. This isn’t to say that at times a great deal of information isn’t necessarily a bad thing for there are times when we do in fact require lots of info to make an informed decision. However, the cliché of ‘less is more’ can often be a powerful notion when making a decision or judgment.

What I have taken away from this book is a greater insight into the process of snap decision making. By reading some of the stories and anecdotes presented by the author, I have become more aware of the biases that can unconsciously occur in the process of making decisions as well as judgments. I find it important to recognize these biases and try to become more mentally aware of them as I make split second decisions in my life.

Tangent

The book takes a tangent on the topic of facial expressions. Two scientists by the names of Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman painstakingly devised a method of reading facial expressions and determining the underlying emotions of the person based on the facial expressions with almost inexplicable correctness. I find their research interesting, but given that only about 40 people in the world have mastered their method, this obviously not an easy undertaking.

As I am nearing the end of the book, I reflect on all the different topics and themes that this book has delved in to. How we as people take in information is really an interesting thing. Sometimes we make a decision on a person, event, process in under a second’s time that might very well change our whole course in life and yet other times it make take years to fully grasp a concept presented to us. Thus far, the book has provided insight to those split second processes of thinking and deciding. It is as if the book doesn’t tell the reader necessarily how it’s done, but provides examples of it happening. We shall see how the author wraps this all up soon.

Gone Awry

Much of the book thus far speaking to split decision making, thin slicing, and intuition has shown some of the positive aspects to these procedures, but what if the thin slicing doesn’t lead to a positive outcome. Chapter 7 brings in the story of a incident in South Bronx where the intuition, thin-slicing, and split decision making efforts by four New York City Police officers would end up costing a young man his life. Amadou Diallo was standing on a porch when the officers drove by and thought he looked “suspicious”. After further “suspensions” arouse from the officers and a confrontation of the young man ensued, where in the process of pulling his wallet from his pocket, he was shot by the officers who believed ( in their own thin-slicing, intuition, blink) that he was drawing a weapon. It’s a tragic example of thin-slicing gone awry.

Marketing

As the book moves on, another interesting topic of sight verses taste takes place. The author points out how the change up in packaging changed sales of brandy. After years of dominating the brandy market, Christian Brothers started losing a strong market share to E&J. Christian Brothers set up two seperate-two hundred person taste test which their brand came out on top. After more research, they discovered that the bottle E&J was using for their brandy was more opulent. People were buying the product because of packaging! How often do we as people make a purchase based on packaging? I think it happens often and marketers know it.

Less is more

As the book moves forward, there are more stories pertaining to the intricate ways the mind works. One story as chapter four finishes up is a story of Cook County hospital in the late 1990’s. The story revolves around potential cardiac arrest patients being evaluated in the emergency department. There was no necessarily standardized method of evaluation of these patients by doctors. Each doctor made on evaluation based on assessment findings followed by treatment which sometimes included being admitted to the hospital and other times being released. A doctor named Brendan Reilly developed an algorithm for physicians to follow for these types of patients for the purpose of better recognition and treatment. The algorithm was used along with the old method for 2 years and data was collected. As it turned out, use of the algorithm presented 95% of the patients with a better treatment outcome than the 75%-89% of other patient outcomes with use of the algorithm.

I use many algorithms in my profession as a paramedic. Algorithms present the user with distinct choices. This cuts decision time shorter because algorithms only provide you with a few choices rather than allow a multitude of choices of endless possibilities. Although this is not necessarily along the same split decision making topics that I have been writing about, it is among the idea that even when evaluating heart attack patients, less information is more. Get the most pertinent information, use the algorithm, and treat as appropriate based on findings. This method had more success than gathering loads of information, data, medical background, blood work, etc., and then treating.

Chapter 4

In chapter 4 of Blink, the author mentions another book titled ‘Sources of Power” by Gary Klein. This is interesting, because I have read this book. In mentioning the book, Gladwell (2005) states, “Klein studied firefighters and who make decisions under pressure…. Klein’s firefighters would size up a situation almost immediately and act, drawing on experience and intuition and a kind of rough mental simulation” (p. 107). This is the type of interestingness of Blink, decision making based on intuition and experience. It is the thought process that occurs within a moment that is fascinating. Thin slicing, snap decisions and the occurrence of it all. The firefighters that were the best in performing these decisions were seasoned veterans. It seems strongly correlated with experiential learning. Even the psychologist mentioned earlier in the book had counseled thousands of couple to now be able to almost diagnose the situation within minutes, not weeks or months. Being able to identify cues within a blink of time as it may be appears to be rooted in having seen the cues previously over and over leading to an almost unconscious state of seeing the cue and reacting appropriately.

Reflection

As I reflect on where this book is going, I find this subject matter interesting as it pertains to my occupation as a firefighter/paramedic. I make many decisions on a spur of a moment; snap decisions without all the information I truly need to make an informed decision often because time is of the essence. As I gain a better understanding of this type of decision making process, I believe that experiential learning plays heavily into this process. The more experience have or I am able to create through training on particular instances (house fires, heart attack resuscitation, rope rescues, etc) the better my snap decision making becomes. It appears that that thin-slicing as the book mentions is partially imbedded in repetition.