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.