Blink

I just finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Wickedly interesting read. The book is about what Gladwell calls rapid cognition; the kind of thinking that takes place in the blink of an eye and forms our first impressions. He draws on a crazy amount of research from every field imaginable (psychology, military history, health care, etc.) to show that by using very small amounts of information, we can make decisions that help us make sense of the world.

The opening story for the book is about the Getty Museum's purchase of a kouros, an ancient marble statue. Since this type of statue, especially one in such good shape, is so rare, the Getty conducted 18 months of research, including complicated surface analysis, and determined that the statue was indeed authentic. The odd thing was that when art historian's looked at the kourus, right away they felt it wasn't real. In the end, despite massive amounts of data that indicated otherwise, the kourus did indeed turn out to be a fraud. Gladwell's book is about how the art historian's knew this truth the instant they saw the statue.

One of the studies I found fascinating in the book was done by a psychologist named John Gottman. After years of fine tuning his method, he and his team are able to look at a 1 hour segment of a couple interacting and predict with 95% accuracy if they will divorce or not. Isn't that crazy?

There's lots in this book to talk about, and just so I can do that, it may make my next book club selection for the group to read.