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[Carrie McLaren <stay.free AT verizon.net>]

Posted at http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/


REGARDING MALCOLM GLADWELL'S NEW BOOK

I hope you'll pardon me while I rant for a minute. New Yorker writer 
Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) has a new book out, BLINK, that 
has become the talk of the town, even prompting one reviewer -- 
Farhad Manjoo of Salon -- to state that, "You won't find a reader who 
doesn't at least like Gladwell" and "There's just no arguing with 
Gladwell."
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/01/13/gladwell/index.html

I'd like to know what planet Mr. Manjoo is living on; Gladwell's work 
ALWAYS makes people want to argue. As I've written here before, his 
writing follows a simple formula: put forth a counterintuitive 
argument, then cleverly select points that advance this claim while 
ignoring and obscuring those that don't.

I haven't read the book in question, so you can take this all with a 
grain of salt, but the premise alone is preposterous: Gladwell claims 
that "rapid cognition"--"the kind of thinking that happens in the 
blink of an eye"--is under-appreciated. As Gladwell writes, "I think 
the Rapid Cognition Model needs to be taken far more seriously--that 
it's smarter and more sophisticated and certainly more influential 
than we generally give it credit for."
http://slate.msn.com/id/2111894/

Oh, really? What about the advertising industry, which does nothing 
if not appreciate humanity's ability to make unconscious, 
split-second decisions (and profit from them). Every year, marketers 
pour billions of dollars into researching and exploiting "blink."

What about the recent election of a president who acted on "gut 
instinct" over a man noted for careful deliberation? What about the 
widespread assumption that it's important to make a good first 
impression... or, for that matter, the belief in love at first sight?

Gladwell devotes a chunk of his book to the work of the John Gottman, 
who videotapes couples and says that within 15 minutes he can tell 
with 90 percent accuracy whether the couple will be married 15 years 
later. According to Gladwell, Gottman's abilities illustrate the 
power of blink. But Gottman's work could just as well illustrate the 
power of careful, deliberative analysis. I first heard about the 
Gottman Institute on NPR's This American Life; in that story, Gottman 
discussed how he acquired his ability to read couples through 
extensive trial and error. It took him over a decade of watching and 
analyzing to get to a point where he figured things out quickly. It 
seems to me that this gets to the heart of the problem with touting 
blink: at least a solid part of its strength is dependent on the kind 
of analysis that Gladwell suggests is overrated.

The very reason that Gottman's work interests us in the first place 
is because it's so unusual, the exception to the rule. The truth is 
that most of us aren't very good at knowing whether our own 
relationships will last, let alone those of our peers. Yet Gladwell 
maintains that the power of blink is democratic, as useful for lay 
persons as experts. If that's the case, why is the divorce rate for 
people who fall in love at first sight no better than those who trod 
a slow-moving path?

It's also really hard to swallow Gladwell's love of blink in light of 
its role in the social stereotypes that play against the female, 
dark-skinned, disabled, or physically unattractive among us. Gladwell 
and his New Yorker colleague James Surowiecki debate this point in an 
enlightening Slate article. ( http://slate.msn.com/id/2111894/ )

To make his case, Gladwell discusses the hiring practices of top 
orchestras. For years, such orchestras, which conducted open 
auditions, overwhelmingly selected male performers. But in the 1980s, 
as Gladwell writes, orchestras "started putting up screens in 
audition rooms, so that the committee could no longer see the person 
auditioning. And immediately -- immediately! -- orchestras started 
hiring women."

Might this indicate that relying on quick impressions isn't such a 
good thing? After all, it suggests that committee members who had 
relied on first impressions were likely to assume a female player 
wasn't very good. Gladwell's retort: people rely on their biases 
regardless of how quickly they make a decision. The problem, he 
suggests, is bias, not the style (or speed) of decision-making. To 
bolster his point, he sites the overwhelming presence of tall men 
heading up corporations. Even very deliberate decisions, he points 
out, reflect bias.

But this reasoning is ridiculous. The fact that reasoned decisions 
often reflect bias doesn't mean that reasoning can't help minimize 
it. When you eliminate reasoning and deliberation, you eliminate even 
the chance of countering biased first impressions.

Gladwell's solution is no solution at all: "We can put up the 
equivalent of screens. We can find ways of editing out nonessential 
information." When you consider that we form prejudices based on a 
person's name, skin color, voice, height, gender, medical history, 
and appearance, the equivalent of screens would be a soundproof, 
windowless blackbox.

I'm not saying Gladwell is a bad writer, or that none of his points 
have merit. I think his skills lie precisely where Farhad Manjoo 
denies them: in getting readers to argue and discuss. He's also good 
at weaving engaging narratives. But, for me, his penchant for 
overselling arguments--and for concealing significant 
counterpoints--overshadows his obvious talents.

Gladwell's thesis would be more accurate in stating that split-second 
decision-making isn't worthless -- that it can at times be channeled 
effectively, and that knowing when to do so is key. But that argument 
sounds a lot less sexy. At any rate, it wouldn't make for a Malcolm 
Gladwell book.

::::

The first article of Gladwell's that gave me fits was his profile of 
Paco Underhill, which you can read on his website:

"The Science of Shopping"
http://www.gladwell.com/1996/1996_11_04_a_shopping.htm

This article pissed me off so much that I did my own interview with 
Underhill for the Village Voice (later reprinted in Stay F---!):

"Shopping Spies: Why is that man staring at me?"
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/15/shopping.html