Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“In the first two seconds of looking—in a single glance—they were able to understand more about the essence of the statue than the team at the Getty was able to understand after fourteen months. Blink is a book about those first two seconds." 

The Getty so desired an ancient Greek statue that it ignored any misgivings and forged ahead, using careful scientific scrutiny almost as an excuse to justify the expensive purchase. Outside experts, having no such motives, easily saw that the statue was probably a fake. That the experts quickly and reliably reached such conclusions demonstrates a faculty that all humans possess—namely, the ability to cut through a mass of noisy information and get down to the essentials.

“The only way that human beings could ever have survived as a species for as long as we have is that we’ve developed another kind of decision-making apparatus that’s capable of making very quick judgments based on very little information."

In the wild, situations pop up that may be dangerous; people have no time to examine or ponder them. Instead, humans have an ability to almost instantly size up threats (and opportunities) and act on them at once.

“The adaptive unconscious does an excellent job of sizing up the world, warning people of danger, setting goals, and initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner.”

Although the West values intellect, the larger mind—much of it unconscious—can reach accurate judgments in less time than it takes a scholar to open a book on the topic.