Blink and You'll Miss the Critical Reading

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Not too long ago Malcolm Gladwell spoke at a professional meeting I attended. When he was done, I turned to a colleague and said, "He just said the same thing I've been saying for years. He just has better anecdotes." While I don't claim to have known everything that is in Blink, there was an awful lot in it that I knew from other sources. He collected it nicely, but in many cases skimmed the surface.

For example, he talks about research showing that a doctor who doesn't interact well with his patients, doesn't hear them out and make them feel well listened to, is more likely to be sued. He concludes that:

Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk, if you have the sense that he isn't listening to you, that he's talking down to you, and that he isn't treating you with respect, listen to that feeling. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting.

While it's likely true that you're not going to have a good relationship with that doctor, that's not what the research Gladwell cited was about: the research was about likelihood of being sued, not quality of care. Never mentioned was the possibility that patients may be making the determination whether to sue or forgive equally (in)competent doctors based on whether they liked the doctor.

Later, Gladwell discusses the IAT, a test that is intended to measure bias by having the subject place things in columns. In the example Gladwell gives, the reader first places things in one of two columns marked "Male or Career" and "Female or Family." Then the reader gets a list with columns labeled "Male or Family" and "Female or Career," which he asserts the reader will complete less quickly, indicating bias about gender roles.

I did in fact complete the second list more slowly, but I noted as well that I hesitated at one point because the page broke in the middle of the list and I couldn't remember which column was which (the column heads weren't repeated on the verso page) and had to flip back. That serendipity of the print page led me to wonder: what about spatial bias? I know which side "male," for example, was in in the first list; to what degree might I hesitate or be wrong because I want to put things where they were before? There is a body of research on how people place words in space (which I know about through a linguist classmate; thanks to her, I will never be able to watch someone talk with their hands without noting how they use the space around them to position things in space and time). I assume the researchers who developed the IAT are aware of that research and have attempted to control for spatial bias, but Gladwell doesn't address what seemed to me like an obvious question. More obvious, though, was the potential role of priming: that first pair of list sets the expectation for "career" belonging with "male," and Gladwell discussed priming--showing something to the subject that affects his or her expectations and skews how they respond to what follows--earlier in the book. It seems like a massive oversight not to address how the researchers control for that in this test. Gladwell finds the results of the IAT, especially regarding racial bias, shocking and enlightening. If it's accurate, then I do too--but the fact that he doesn't address an issue that seems so obvious in the context of his book just left me wondering whether it was the researchers or Gladwell who overlooked an important flaw.

Toward the end of the book he mentions Gavin de Becker, security consultant and author of the brilliant book The Gift of Fear. He quotes de Becker on how bodyguards react and are trained to react, but doesn't cite the compelling opening anecdote from de Becker's book, or much else from the book, even though de Becker's book, whose premise is that you can protect yourself by listening to your instincts, makes a powerful case for the entire concept of this book. (Especially de Becker's opening story. I defy you to forget that.) I had spent much of the book thinking, "I wonder if he knows about The Gift of Fear." Finally, on page 230, he mentions it in identifying de Becker, but never says a word about what's in de Becker's book. So he knows about the book, but perhaps hasn't read it? When it's so apropos of his own book? Such an odd omission.

Not to say that you shouldn't read Blink--it contains a ton of interesting information and valuable food for thought. But read it with a critical eye, not just a blink.



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