The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

It has been long emphasized that people make decisions about the people they meet within the first few minutes.  According to Malcolm Gladwell in his boom, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,  these impressions are formed almost whenever we meet a new person or have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation.  He says, Snap judgments are, first of all, enormously quick:  they rely on the thinnest slices of experience… they are also unconscious. 

Gladwell says that sometimes we need to trust the blink because this ability to make instant judgment calls saves lives, provides interpersonal insight, allows us to assess situations instantaneously and take timely action.  So, it’s not an ability you want to be discard, even though sometimes your first snap decisions can be terribly wrong.  However, when you do have the opportunity, you must gather relevant information relating to the challenge before reaching a decision.  However, Gladwell warns against increasing the post of information endlessly and states that at times you need to trust that gut instinct or blink.