Book Review: “Blink: the power of thinking without thinking”

Citation: Adhiya K (2015) Book Review: " Blink: the power of thinking without thinking. " Front. Psychol. 6:1225. " It doesn't feel right! " Ever caught yourself saying this? You probably then may have to lay your hands on understanding what drives that feeling inside you—a feeling that is completely contradictory to logic or decisions made on the basis of facts. BLINK gives you that understanding. BLINK is written by psychotherapist Malcolm Gladwell, having four other popular contributions to his credit such as The Tipping Point, Outliers, etc. Gladwell's writing often centers around unforeseen implications of the social sciences' research. His books, articles, and speeches are received with great accolade and despite his critics having described him as " prone to oversimplification, " I found it quite to an advantage in his book BLINK. This book is considered one of his finest works by reviewers across the globe. BLINK is a simple book, about how we actually think without thinking and the choices that follow such a thinking. The writer proves how the choices we make in an instant—in the blink of an eye-aren't that simple as they appear to be. So, this book reveals to you the mysteries of mind reading—an ability, which the reader realizes on completion of this book, lies within oneself. The central focus of this book revolves around how we cognize the world around us, how we thin-slice (i.e., making a whole picture from just a gist), how rapid cognitions can be a lot better and productive than long but futile detailed analysis of situations, and thereby how these rapid cognitions sometimes lead us astray! The major contribution of this book comes around when Gladwell (2005) introduces us to our massive internal computer—the one that decides for us when we are unable to (consciously) and further on, how emotions play a huge, titanic role in our cognitions! Actually, that would be one of the most intriguing parts of this book. BLINK is about human rapid cognition, a thinking that is a lot faster than we can realize it, and a thinking that operates quite mysteriously in comparison to our commonly used careful, planned, and thoughtful decision making. And that's the major hypothesis in this book. Along with this variable, through his extensive research and analysis, Gladwell (2005) introduces several other variables that are interdependent with rapid cognition—such as emotions, attitude, judgments, snap decisions, role of …