To Think or to Blink?

(Edi­tor’s Note: Should Ham­let be liv­ing with us now and read­ing best­sellers, he might be won­der­ing: To Blink or not to Blink? To Think or not to Think? We are pleased to present, as part of our ongo­ing Author Speaks Series, an arti­cle by Blind SpotsMadeleine Van Hecke, author of Blind Spots: Why Smart Peo­ple Do Dumb Things. In it, she offers the “on the oth­er hand” to Mal­colm Glad­well’s Blink argument.)

To Think or to Blink?

- By Madeleine Van Hecke, PhD

Is thought­ful reflec­tion nec­es­sar­i­ly bet­ter than hasty judgments?

Not accord­ing to Mal­colm Glad­well who argued in his best-sell­ing book, Blink, that the deci­sions peo­ple make in a blink are often not only just as accu­rate, but MORE accu­rate, than the con­clu­sions they draw after painstak­ing analysis.

So, should we blink, or think?

When we make judg­ments based on a thin slice of time  a few min­utes talk­ing with some­one in a speed dat­ing sit­u­a­tion, for exam­ple are our judg­ments real­ly as accu­rate as when we ana­lyze end­less reams of data?

Glad­well says sure  that’s why Blink is called the pow­er of think­ing with­out think­ing. Glad­well tells some com­pelling sto­ries to demon­strate that pow­er, includ­ing his open­ing gam­bit about the Greek kouros sculp­ture that two experts accu­rate­ly detect­ed as a fake with­in a few moments perusal, after months of sci­en­tif­ic test­ing had deemed it genuine.

But Glad­well’s own exam­ples show that peo­ple are most like­ly to be cor­rect in their blink judg­ments when they are like the two art experts when their judg­ments rest on a moth­er lode of back­ground expe­ri­ence or infor­ma­tion. So a blink judg­ment might serve you well at those times but the rest of the time, you need to slow down in order to avoid the blind spots that can trip up even the smartest peo­ple. In my book, Blind Spots, I sug­gest tac­tics to help one make bet­ter deci­sions because they help side­step the pit­falls that our blind spots keep us from seeing.

While some “blink” deci­sions can be on tar­get when they’re based on our exper­tise, they don’t always serve us well, for two rea­sons. First, because in high­ly-charged, emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions  such as when a police offi­cer becomes sus­pi­cious of some­one and fears dan­ger  blink deci­sions can result in tragedy. Glad­well acknowl­edges this he notes that some police depart­ments have adopt­ed one-offi­cer squad cars. Why? Because an offi­cer alone will act more slow­ly, often wait for back-up. This delays the time between becom­ing sus­pi­cious and tak­ing action, and it appar­ent­ly reduces the num­ber of inac­cu­rate blink-deci­sions that offi­cers make.

In Blind Spots, I point out that fail­ing to stop and think is a blind spot  we don’t think because we don’t rec­og­nize this is a sit­u­a­tion in which I real­ly need to step back from what’s going on and fig­ure out what to do. As a result we shoot off an e‑mail that we lat­er regret, or exu­ber­ant­ly embrace a flawed mar­ket­ing plan. Every time you have ever said I real­ize now, you’re rec­og­niz­ing an ear­li­er time where you failed to stop and think.

The sec­ond rea­son that expert blink deci­sions can go astray is because some­times our very exper­tise blinds us to new, more cre­ative per­spec­tives. Why, for exam­ple, did peo­ple design ear­ly train cars with no cen­tral aisles, and with brakes that had to be oper­at­ed by a con­duc­tor seat­ed out­side, on top of the train car  a dan­ger­ous prac­tice? Because these ear­ly cars were almost exact repli­cas of what the expert design­ers were most famil­iar with the stage­coach. So our exper­tise can some­times trap us.

Now, I think intu­ition is impor­tant, and one of the good things about Blink is that it’s kind of a cor­rec­tive book, one that cel­e­brates the val­ue of intu­itive think­ing and pokes fun a bit at care­ful, ana­lyt­ic rea­son­ing. But Blink over­sim­pli­fies the issue. Blind Spots reflects more deeply on the ten­sion between ana­lyt­ic thought and intu­ition. It’s a mis­take to enthrone log­ic as the sole and sure-fire way to Truth, but it’s also a mis­take to blithe­ly accept every whim as inspired. A bet­ter slo­gan might be Don’t believe every­thing that you think. The strate­gies in Blind Spots help you fig­ure out what you should and should­n’t believe.

Some of the sto­ries that Glad­well tells are tes­ti­mo­ny to the mys­tery of our minds, and I absolute­ly agree that our minds often work in mys­te­ri­ous ways. But that mys­tery goes way beyond the nature of intu­ition. Take the evi­dence that chil­dren can be incred­i­bly log­i­cal in their think­ing. One three-year-old girl was being teased by her Aunt, who was nib­bling at the child’s toes and threat­en­ing I’m going to eat you up No! said the lit­tle girl, I’m going to eat you up! Aha, said the Aunt, but I’m big­ger than you, so I’ll eat you up first. Uh-uhre­tort­ed this young­ster: because I’ll eat your mouth first. The log­ic of this preschool­er is quite breath­tak­ing. How did she do that?

On the oth­er hand, there’s also research that rais­es the oppo­site ques­tion: the How could any­one be so dumb? ques­tion. Some stud­ies, for exam­ple, show that intel­li­gent adults con­sis­tent­ly make mis­takes in rea­son­ing. How do you explain that? To me, the appar­ent stu­pid­i­ty of adults the enig­ma of why smart peo­ple do dumb things is a puz­zle to be solved.

Smart peo­ple do dumb things because our minds work FOR us  80 or 90 per­cent of the time. But the rest of the time they work against us: they cre­ate blind spots that trip us up. Some of these blind spots are famil­iar to us, like my-side bias — not see­ing anoth­er point of view. One smart fel­low told me what he did to get a squir­rel out of his base­ment. He opened a win­dow, piled up some planks and box­es to cre­ate a road, and set down a trail of nuts, end­ing with a heap on the patio. Now that MIGHT have been a smart thing to do — but it could have back­fired. Because that trail went both ways  pos­si­bly lead­ing the trou­ble­some squir­rel out of the base­ment, but pos­si­bly lead­ing oth­er squir­rels INTO the base­ment. Some smart plans fail because of my-side bias. For­get­ting that there’s anoth­er point of view is one of the nat­ur­al blind spots that work against us.

It takes some time, it takes some effort it takes more than a blink  but pay­ing atten­tion to your Blind Spots can help you think more crit­i­cal­ly and more creatively.

Madeleine Van HeckeMadeleine Van Hecke, Ph.D., is a licensed clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, speak­er, con­sul­tant, and author. She is the author of Blind Spots: Why Smart Peo­ple Do Dumb Things (Prometheus Books, Inc., 2007).

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4 Comments

  1. Michael on August 4, 2008 at 5:24

    Is thought­ful reflec­tion nec­es­sar­i­ly bet­ter than hasty judgments(sic)?

    Not accord­ing to Mal­colm Glad­well who argued in his best-sell­ing book, Blink, that the deci­sions peo­ple make in a blink are often not only just as accu­rate, but MORE accu­rate, than the con­clu­sions they draw after painstak­ing analysis.”

    Er, did you read ‘Blink’ and par­tic­u­lar­ly the last half of the book before you wrote this article?

    At least you pay some pass­ing lip ser­vice to Glad­well’s actu­al point, but most of this arti­cle seems to be less of an argu­ment against Glad­well and more of an argu­ment with Artie McStrawman.

    Too bad, as I’m sure you’re mak­ing some valid points and are an intel­li­gent per­son, but your style of argu­ment has real­ly lost me as a poten­tial reader.



  2. Madeleine Van Hecke on August 5, 2008 at 4:38

    To me, Blink’s main point is that often our seat of the pants deci­sions are as good as, or bet­ter than, ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing. Gladwell’s sec­ond impor­tant points are that intu­itive deci­sions are most like­ly to be cor­rect a) when we’re not under great emo­tion­al stress and 2) when those deci­sions are essen­tial­ly based on “implicit” knowl­edge, espe­cial­ly “expert” knowl­edge that is derived from a great deal of expe­ri­ence in a par­tic­u­lar field. Glad­well also agrees that there are times when our quick deci­sions lead to ter­ri­ble results. The major crit­i­cism I have of Glad­well is that he nev­er comes to grips with the ques­tion: When should you take more time to think and ana­lyze, and when might it be cru­cial to stop and think? How would you know when to trust those intu­itions? He promis­es to help read­ers become bet­ter at intu­itive think­ing, but the only advice Blink has about that is to avoid mak­ing quick deci­sions in intense­ly emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions, and (this one is more implied that stat­ed) to increase your exper­tise so that you’ll have that base of expert knowl­edge to inform your intu­itions. I real­ly enjoyed Blink; Glad­well is a great sto­ry­teller who can take some­times dry research and trans­late it into inter­est­ing tid­bits, and as I said I think Blink is an excel­lent anti­dote to the atti­tude that log­i­cal­ly-mind­ed peo­ple some­times have in which they den­i­grate any deci­sions not derived from a syl­lo­gism. But I stand by my main point which is that peo­ple need some­thing more than encour­age­ment to trust their intu­itions while giv­ing a pass­ing nod to the pit­falls of quick deci­sions. What I’ve done in Blind Spots, which is a psy­chol­o­gy self-help type of book to help peo­ple become bet­ter thinkers, is to pro­vide that some­thing more.



  3. Alvaro on August 6, 2008 at 5:58

    Hel­lo Michael, my impres­sion is that Madeleine did in fact read the book…so why don’t we just debate the case itself? 

    I see the val­ue in both Blink and Think, and see mer­it in help­ing peo­ple under­stand when to use each mode of deci­sion-mak­ing, and how to sharp­en both.

    Your thoughts?



  4. Barbara on August 9, 2008 at 5:43

    I was think­ing more along the lines of the organ­ic rea­sons for decid­ing quick­ly or for tak­ing time to think. This deci­sion is cov­ered more in my post “Fight or Flight”.



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SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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