In his best selling book, Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell presents an important and basic picture of the power of this hidden chamber of our minds. Although the breakthrough to the deeper intelligence occurred years before his book was published, Gladwell—who worked for many years as a science writer for The Washington Post—clearly demonstrates for the popular audience how the unconscious mind brilliantly reads situations in the blink of an eye. The unconscious does this without us having any conscious awareness of the process—as though our mind is on autopilot.

In one key example, Gladwell contrasted how two groups of experts analyzed an art object which had supposedly survived from antiquity. One group used a time-consuming, detailed, very conscious analysis whereas the other group simply came to instinctive, quick-blink takes on the art piece in question. The outcome: those with the “blink read” correctly judged it a phony while those using the methodical approach all mistakenly concluded that it was authentic.

In another situation, a fire chief walked into a room in which his crew had difficulty extinguishing a kitchen fire. Instinctively, he sensed something was wrong and immediately ordered the firemen to leave the room only seconds before the kitchen collapsed into an underlying basement where the real fire was raging. The chief’s instinct thus saved the lives of his men. Only in retrospect, after consciously processing the situation for some time, did the chief realize that his “blink mind” had picked up in a half a second that the temperature in the upstairs kitchen was far hotter than the visible flames there would normally generate, telling him to “get out now.”

Summary of Gladwell’s findings about the unconscious mind

  • Our minds have two types of awareness—surface mind and “blink mind” (conscious/unconscious)
  • We think independently on two levels
  • “Blink mind” awareness is far superior
  • Surface mind is in total denial about “blink mind” (with the exception of breakthroughs of intuition)
  • We have two takes on any situation
  • We can believe exactly the opposite what we believe on the surface.
  • Often we have hidden biases (beliefs)
  • We often make decisions for entirely different reasons than the surface mind thinks we do.
  • The real story about ourselves hidden in the “blink mind,” meaning “Anything is possible.”
  • We all have a lot to learn about ourselves.
  • The real story of how our minds work and how we make decisions is hidden in the unconscious.