La force de l'intuition : Prendre la bonne décision en deux secondes

I was a little skeptical of this book at first (partially because it is so popular; I tend to distrust popular things), but it was interesting. The author likes to think of it as an "adventure story" about how people think. The book is about how people can make split second decisions that are surprisingly good. He goes into some depth about what makes for good decisions and what makes for bad decisions. The essence of it is that you should trust your intuitions in areas where you have deep knowledge, but should not trust your intuitions in areas where you are likely to have bias. Of course, in between those two extremes is a large gray area.

According to Gladwell, the reason why such split second decisions have a tendency to be better than more reasoned decisions is that there is usually a core of relevant information which you perceive quickly. Gathering more data and ruminating may distract you from what is really important in your judgment. This explains why these intuitive decisions work well for experts: experts are good at quickly focusing on the key attributes of what they are observing.

However, even experts fail in their split second judgment when they are judging something that is completely new. Split second judgment is a type of pattern matching, almost stereotyping. If something does not fit your preexisting mental model, then you are likely to misjudge it, even if you are an expert in that area. In our mental models, "bad" often seems the same as "novel", and it takes a real awareness of your intuition to distinguish between the two.

One interesting point that Gladwell brings up is that in day-to-day situations, the judgment of non-experts may be as good as experts. Gladwell brings up an example of ranking different brands of jam; a group of students did nearly as well as a group of experts. However, what was most interesting is that the resemblance only held for the group that just had to rank the jams. The novice group that had to rank the jams and explain why did terribly; the very act of explaining made them second guess their judgment. One way of describing an expert might be someone who has good judgment and can explain why their judgments are correct.

You may have noticed that I used the word "intuition" interchangeably with "split second judgment" and other phrases. Gladwell does not actually like the word intuition; he thinks it makes a perfectly rational and understandable process seem mystical and vague. I thought it was kind of silly of him to toss out a perfectly functional word for more verbose phases.

Gladwell says in the epilogue that he went into this book meaning to do nothing more than write an intellectual adventure story. By the end, he realized that that this book does call on people to take action. He tells the story of how making orchestra auditions blind, orchestras have managed to greatly equalize the gender disparity in that field. By removing the irrelevant information (gender) the conductors were able to better judge the relevant information (musical skill). This made Gladwell realize that this book did have a message. First, we should each be aware of our own thinking processes to try to refine our intuitive judgments and recognize when we are biased.

Second, we should look for ways of removing judgment bias from various institutions to try to address social inequality. The second is particularly important because removing forms of bias seems likely to be much more effective and much less resented than top-down solutions like affirmative action. However, and Gladwell admits this, removing bias is not as easy in most of life as it is in orchestra auditions. It is hard to hide things such as gender in any sort of interview that requires assessment of verbal communication skills. Even if you can get over that hurdle, you still have to face that fact that people hired under unbiased processes may still face bias on the job (as has been the case for some of the women who initially made it into orchestras with the aid of blind auditions).

Overall, the book was a good, quick, entertaining read that provided some food for thought. I would recommend reading it if you are interested in the workings of the mind, especially if you are someone who usually finds non-fiction a bit too dull and dense. ( )

What an interesting book. It looks at our biases in the first few seconds and how sometimes it is right and sometimes not. I had been planning on reading this for a while and am so glad I did. It is an easy read. I highly recommend it. ( )

3/31/22

I haven't read it for a long time. But it helps to know what a left handed smart person thinks like. And how people choose what courses they take in college, and why some people drop the class after attending the first lecture. ( )

Before your concious mind even thinks of thinking ... unconciously you already know the answer. The power of blink!

His books are REALLY difficult for me to sum up. But I do know if he writes another book, I'll be in line to buy it. ( )