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.

Snap Decisions

Moving yet deeper into the snap decisions that we make, Gladwell (2005) mentions the story of one of the world’s top tennis coaches. This particular coach, when watching a tennis game, can call out when a player is going to double fault while the player is serving but before the player’s racket hits the ball. As Gladwell states, “He thin slices some part of the service motion and –blink!- he just knows. But here’s the catch: much to Braden’s frustration, he simply cannot figure out how he knows” (p.49). In other words, the tennis coach cannot place exactly the reasoning behind how he knows this information, but for some reason after watching thousands of tennis serves in his life, he just knows. Fascinating! The logic behind snap decisions is interesting, yet it does not appear to be scientific. We all have made snap decisions without knowing the exact reasoning for the decision. The process seems to take place deep in our psyche if not sub-consciously.

Thin Slicing

The book moves further into the notion of what it describes as “thin slicing”. The book takes a lok at the work of psychologist John Gottman. Gottman’s work with thousands of married couples has brought about research that entails thin slicing of information in order to discover insights into the marriage. In other words, Gottman is able to discern information about the marriage (happiness, loathing, problems, etc) within a very short amount of time based on moments of time and actions of the married people rather than long, drawn out consoling sessions. According to the book, Gottman states he can predict with 95% accuracy whether a couple will still be married after fifteen years using these methods of thin slicing (Gladwell 2005, p 21). Similar to the statue story, a first impression or small bits of information are at times more powerful than the long intricate look at something. The book takes this notion even further. A group a researchers were sent into the dorm rooms of college students as part of a research experiment. Based on cleanness of the room, possessions, cleanliness, etc the researchers would attempt to draw conclusions about personality traits of the students. Not highly sophisticated, but the results were pretty accurate.

Book Started!

The book starts out with a story about a marble statue that was being sold for around 10 million dollars. The purchaser had some concerns about the authenticity and brought in some experts to ensure the piece was authentic. Several “experts” evaluated the statue and confirmed it as authentic. However, there were a couple of individuals that had some doubts, but couldn’t quantify their reasoning; in other words, something didn’t feel right about it. Call it gut reaction or instinct. As it turns out the statue is a fake and the purchaser gets ripped off. After a significant amount of time and reflection, those who questioned the authenticity were able to quantify the reasoning behind their first judgments, however for the longest time, they could not articulate why they felt the statue to be a fake.

This notion of instinct appears to be the start of what this book is about. A notion of -it doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t look right but I don’t know why, my intuition about the matter is different than what others tell me I should know or feel. As a firefighter and paramedic, I come across instances like this where my gut reaction to perform a task is different than the standard operating procedure for the event at hand. I am intrigued about the mental processes that occur in these situations and why this occurs. What happens to make it occur? Is it possible to train for these occurrences?

Blink

I am going to be reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. One of the reasons behind choosing this book is my interest in decision making. As a paramedic and a firefighter, critical decision making is often at the forefront of my occupation. I have read other books such as Sources of power by Gary Klein and The logic of failure by Dietrich Dörmer. I found these books interesting as they dive into why people make decisions, but afterword are not always able to articulate why they specifically made the decision that they did. This is sometimes the case in my occupation.