Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Blink : The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

This was a fascinating non-fiction book about our first impressions, the decisions we make, the thinking we do that isn't always explainable. This is basically a series of stories with research findings backing up certain phenomenon, but no real conclusion on what we should do or not do. Gladwell starts with a story about a statue from antiquity that the Getty Museum planned to purchase. After 18 months of research and expert analysis, they decided it is for real and purchased it. Other art specialists started coming to look at it and had immediate insights that it is a fake. Turns out they are right - but how?
One story is about couples and how one researcher can analyze 15 minutes of a conversation between them and predict with 95% accuracy if they will stay together.
I loved the marketing section - it started with a musician, that didn't fit into any category, and though music experts found him wonderful, but he had a hard time breaking into the business, because he didn't do well in surveys of sample listeners. The book told of the classic Pepsi - Coke story, where taste tests showed that people liked Pepsi better, so Coke changed it's formula making a huge mistake and having to bring back Coke Classic. This series of stories was about how people often can't tell you what they think, or it is out of context (sip test for the drinks instead of drinking a whole can at home), or just don't know how to react to something new (like the musician) and it is interpreted as dislike.
I also like the Pentagon war games story, where they spent enormous sums analyzing an enemy and building a virtual force to fight them, but the person who was asked to lead the virtual enemy defenses used his gut military instincts and did unpredictable things, that toppled the great virtual US army.
(finished listening July 17)

1 comment:

LovesBlueSkies said...

I really thought this book was interesting. I'd have to say my favorite part was the Coke/Pepsi part.