Aug 4th, 2008
To Think or to Blink?
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 
Madeleine Van Hecke, author of Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things
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-uh” retorted 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 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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