Critiquing Blink

Malcolm Gladwell's Blink is a factual yet interesting book written around a theory pertaining to the human mind being able to do what is called thin-slicing. Thin-slicing is the ability to make a snap judgement or to take the knowledge you have stored in the back of your brain and put it together to quickly make an assumption or a predictability only seconds before it happens. Gladwell does this in Blink through a large variety of factual happenings. He introduces us to different tests and studies performed as well as experiences of thin-slicing from several different cases.

To some people, Blink may seem too repetitive as it stays around the same topic throughout its entire book. In my opinion, Blink was very interesting. The topic was unusual, but relevant to all of humanity. I believe that Gladwell's use of so many different topics supported his theory, and therefore convinced me to agree with what he was trying to communicate even more.

Each chapter in Blink covers a different topic and includes a different study. These topics cover a very wide range of cases where a person, or persons, has thin-sliced in one way or another. I believe every person could relate to at least one or more of these examples, and find others intriguing. The book starts off with identifying a statue, or a Kouros, that seemed identical to an original, but a passionate professional on the subject discovered it to be a fake within a moment of entering the room and glancing at the statue. That was particularly interesting to myself as an artist. There was also a test performed in college dormitories where information was gathered from a roommate's belongings before meeting, which most college students have done before. A few examples with sports were used as well, such as the tennis and baseball examples. I feel like, because it covered such a broad range, it reaches out to just about any audience age. I do not believe it is like a children's book, but a late elementary age student and on could really enjoy the book. Elderly men and women could probably relate more to the examples it gives, having more experience and seeing more throughout life. And all ages in between could do the same and learn a great deal more.

There were also the different examples of tests that had been taken. There was one chapter that informed the reader about an experiment on actually sitting down and taking a test. One example discussed in this chapter was how our minds think differently depending on what we have done right before taking a test. Another example given was how it can alter our thinking when taking a test if it asks for ethnicity right before. A few tests were included for the reader to take. I believe this was a clever idea to really engage the reader. This was also an easy way for the reader to compare his or her results to what Gladwell was saying other results had said.

Only a few times did I ever find Blink to be a little boring. For the most part it was captivating for me. The times I did find it a little slow only lasted for a short while. The book was packed with legos, but also had a really good amount of ethos. It was point obvious that Gladwell did his research on the topic, giving him a lot of credibility and making the reader feel like Gladwell knew what he was talking about. At some points the book was also drawing in with its ethos. In the last chapter, there was a story about a few officers who shot and killed an innocent man because of a snap judgement that was incorrect.

Gladwell's use of both good results and bad results of thin-slicing also contributed to making Blink a pretty well-rounded piece. It provides us with the positive and negative effects that makes Gladwell's concept more realistic. He never states whether he believes that thin-slicing is a good or bad thing either, he simply wrote the book to inform us about it. I believe that because of this, controversy is avoided with whether or not Blink is credible and would be suggested to others to read.

The conclusion to Gladwell's Blink was disappointing. It was more of a sudden stop to the book rather than wrapping up the ending nicely. It seemed to continue on another example of a time when thin-slicing was used and then it ended just a few sentences later. The conclusion was later extended to the afterward. They say though, that you should always have just as strong of a closing as the opening. When it is not, then it can weaken the piece as a whole. That is what it did too. It left the readers thinking that the ending was a waste. Gladwell should have put more care or effort into it.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink. He had a very good amount of information and support that captured the readers' attention and interested them on this unusual subject. It was brilliant of him to include so much research, because if he had not, then I do not believe the selling of his book would be nearly as successful. We could see that Gladwell cared a lot about this subject and he carefully constructed this piece of work. I would recommend this book to others and I am interested in reading other Malcolm Gladwell pieces now.