Is Blink Good Psychology

I had to write a response to the book Blink. It’s written by Malcolm Gladwell. He also wrote about the 10,000 hour rule in the book Outliers.

Here is my paper

    Blinking is the information given to us when taking in information and processing it through our adaptive unconscious and through all of our experiences. Our brains are capable to looking at something and making a decision within a blink of an eye. Gladwell sets out to explain this and convinced me that it exists but Blink is not good psychology. In the opening of the book, Gladwell tells us to be wary of taking this information. Blink is a collection of anecdotes and experiments that try to bring attention to this phenomenon that is blinking. He wants us to be curious, interested, and even empowered to think that we are superheroes. 

     Before college I may have thought Blink was good psychology. Why? Because I did not know what the scientific method or what good proof writing was. Well I did but it wasn’t ingrained in me. A series of examples does not necessarily mean something is true. If I try to prove that for all numbers, x is positive is true. I can show you and use the example x=2 or x=3. These are positive numbers. Do you believe me now? This seems convincing. But watch x=-2. This is no longer true and now the argument I tried to make is false. That’s what Blink is. It’s a series of examples. Yes math and psychology are different but this general proof is still the same. In Psychology you need a large amount of samples and experiments. Make sure there is no bias in the experiment. Make sure that the results are greater than random chance. Blink has none of that. Yes the experiments in the text used this methodology but when discussing the text as a whole the experiments were good psychology, but the text is not. 

    In Blink, he wants to persuade us that we can make split decisions and that maybe we should trust them or at least consider trusting them. Throughout the book he tells us to be skeptical of trusting our “blink” and to take the good with a grain of salt. 

    My reaction to the text is positive. I enjoyed Blink. I listened to the audiobook version of the textbook while working and I found myself stopping to Google Millennium Challenge 2002. The story of the underdog deemed inferior, defeating the larger army.  Riper chooses the autonomous style of management. This is my own bias but that’s the style of management that I’ve worked under. Trust that the people you hired will do a good job, give them a sandbox, and be amazed. That’s how CEO’s in Silicon Valley operate. While listening to Blink I found myself paying more attention when we covered something in class. An example would be the Big 5. The experiment would people would walk into their rooms. Another example would be the priming tests. People would walk slowly when told to read words that mentioned being old.  

    The book is empowering. When I reached the end of the book, I did find myself thinking I was a superhero. I need to scratch my back. Invest in Gold! The spot on the wall seems a bit less white. Invest in IBM! I have a headache time to sell! I wanted to trust my instincts more. That’s I believe this books sets out to be. A motivational book not a psychology textbook and for me it achieves this goal.