Blink examines the phenomenon of snap judgments, meaning the split-second decisions we make unconsciously. These instant judgments are important decision-making tools, but it can also lead to bad choices and all manner of problems. Blink explains how we can best make use of them. It has themes based on rapid cognition, ‘Thin-slicing’ and adaptive consciousness. It is dealing with topics from prejudice, rationality to free will. As a whole, the book argues for a heightened appreciation of judgments based on less information rather than more
The books starts with the Getty Museum of Art in California, in 1980, purchasing a ancient Greek statue - Kouros. The Getty was involved in an intensive fourteen month research before buying the kouros then also when other renowned historians and experts saw it and believed that something was not quite right with it even though they are unable to articulate precisely what was wrong. This mystery of the statue that whether it was a fake or was it real was not resolved, but that intuitive or “snap” judgments are valuable, and that experts are especially able to make accurate intuitive judgments.…show more content… Chapter One’s examples of “thin-slicing” include one psychologist’s ability to predict, with so much accuracy, whether a couple will still be together in fifteen year’s time, and another’s ability to judge someone’s personality with more accuracy than that person’s closest friends based on nothing more than the contents of his or her dorm room. These examples illustrate how experts can take small samples and make significant and accurate predictions and suggest the ways in which we all “thin-slice” experience and observations to make predictions and act
