Malcolm Gladwell

Jeepers this was an annoying book.

Its main problem is that it doesn't manage to hold to any central thesis. I think many people would pick it up thinking it's about how we make better decisions when we act instinctively, rather than over-analyze decisions.

Actually the main conclusion Gladwell draws is "it depends".

The back-up to that is that experts in a field, with years of experience, can instinctively make correct decisions, without necessarily being able to articulate precisely why. No, really.

There were some interesting bits of psychology, particularly about how articulating why we make a decison may actually be detrimental to our being able to do it (as the thing your memory stores is then your articulation of it, not the doing of it). However, he seems to then ignore the things he is telling us, in relying on 1st hand accounts of instinctual events, which he has told us are inherently unreliable. Gah!

As with The Tipping Point, there is quite a bit of this cherry-picking data, according to whichever way his argument is blowing at the time, and much flawed logic. For example:

* He claims that strangers judging a subject's character from their bedroom are more accurate than the subject's friends judgements. Actually he means that they more closely match the self-assessments of the subject, which may or may not be accurate.

* I'm paraphrasing, but he says that doctors that we think have a domineering tone have been "found wanting" by us, with the implication that we should ignore them. But actually he has previously said that they are simply more likely to be sued, and that that has no correlation with how many medical mistakes they make. So they have not been "found wanting" and a doctor with a nicer tone may well be a worse doctor.

* he says that that if we want to have more positive instinctive associations about black people, we should get to know some, hang out with them, become friends etc., etc. That's a nice piece of social engineering, which I am very happy to support in principle, but what he has shown earlier in the chapter is that if you want to have more positive instinctive associations actually what you want to do is think about positive black role models (MLK, Nelson Mandela) and watch international track and field events.

* Gladwell cites a statistic that displays of contempt in a relationship are correlated with number of colds suffered by the recipient of the contempt, from which he draws the conclusion the effect is so stressful that it suppresses the immune systen. What?! where does that conclusion come from? It could be the person is throwing sickies, or that they're taking long walks in the cold, or they're smoking more, etc., etc. But Gladwell seems to blithely draws these confident conclusions without pause or consideration.

Gladwell still writes engagingly (I read this in a day) and many of the anecdotes and sciencey snippets are fascinating. I feel his books would have more integrity if they were just collections of essays (or his articles). As it is he seems hidebound to find some grand overarching theme, leading him to undermine the good and interesting writing that is here.

… (mais)