Posted by In the spirit of continuing my journey into the world of critical thinking, I recently read the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. Blink explores the concept of rapid cognition, so you may think it is on the other extreme of critical thinking. Partly yes, partly no. At the end of the day, an important part of critical thinking is to understand how the brain works and where the limitations lie.
When fast thinking works
Blink celebrates the power of fast thinking. Also called “System 1” in the David Kahneman book “Thinking Fast and Slow“. This is the part of the brain that is fast, automatic, intuitive. It operates quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. It’s our default mode of thinking and helps us make quick decisions, like recognising a face or avoiding danger.
Our brains are wired to make fast decisions and simplify processing as much as possible. The speed forces us to make quick decisions on the basis of the information we seem to have available. Intuition takes over when our system is in overload. Which it is more and more these days.
Snap judgments and gut feelings
There is no saying that intuition is just good or just bad. It has a wonderful side of automating tasks that are repetitive and don’t require “brain space”. But there is more to it than just automation. When people talk about a gut feeling, we sometimes may wonder what they mean. And if they get it right, we then wonder how they knew. I am not talking about football guesses, I am talking about informed hunches.
One of the most impressive examples in the book is about the Getty Kouros. The Kouros “was” an ancient Greek artefact being acquired by the Paul Getty Museum. Scientists ran tests, the evidence pointed to its veracity. The museum acquired the piece. As a few art experts looked at the piece, some of them had intuitive gut reactions that it was a fake, in just a few seconds. They felt something was off, even if they did not know immediately what it was. Needless to say that when they dug deeper, it was indeed a fake. Those experts spent careers evaluating such artefacts, and deep inside, their brains had learnt how to detect a fake. Even if they could not explain how they knew.
Experts, through years of exposure, develop an intuitive filter that allows them to assess authenticity instantly – even before they can articulate why.
This is the type of intuition that one wants to have. Feels like a natural talent but it is really learnt intuition. But how do we build that kind of intuition?
Learning from intuition
By understanding that we can make snap judgments that are actually pretty good, and better than complex judgments, it is important to understand why that happens.
In the Cook County Hospitals, the doctors were making heart attack diagnoses with a long checklist and limited reliability. Processes were cumbersome, and everyone was overworked. As a limited resources hospital, the new director decided to simplify the process by reducing the decision to a few key variables. In a way, he replicated how the learned intuition would have worked, especially under time pressure. The accuracy improved, and intuition had space to thrive.
Another famous example the book alludes to is Paul Van Riper’s War Game. In a Pentagon war simulation, Paul’s team (acting as the enemy in the simulation) completely overwhelms the US army team, which was more prepared, had more data and complex decision systems. By relying on the instincts of his team, he created the space for their intuition to thrive in a fluid, rapidly moving situation. It outperformed by a mile the over-engineered analytics.
Every day, we encounter situations where we know the answer before we can explain it. Often, it is learned intuition. Warning: Intuition will only apply if you have learned a great deal about a subject.
When judgment fails
What I like about the book is that it shows the two sides of intuition. Often, we judge character traits on the basis of how people look. Tall men with deep voices look like leaders – the Warren Harding example. The stories of bias and wrong assumptions in US police cases are more than a handful.
I have gone through years of unconscious bias training as part of recruitment or people development. We all have it, no matter how well we rank ourselves in our ability to judge people. One of the starkest realisations I had in the early days of these trainings was how fast we would make a decision once we got into an interview room. Mostly, on the basis of cues to assess if people thought like us or were likeable that we would want to work with them.
Interviewing turned out much harder since that day. I would almost always hit a reset after the first 15 minutes and test out my own gut decision for the next 15 or 30 minutes, so I could assess further. Since then, I have rarely relied on short interviews alone.
My favourite judgment of failure is the Pepsi Challenge. After all these years (as a die-hard Coke drinker), I finally understood what happened to all those people. And I finally understand under which conditions I am willing to subject myself to this test. In reality, in a short sip test, Pepsi, which is sweeter, had an advantage, even with Coke drinkers. But the reality of the experience is that you drink a full Coke (not just a sip), and you also experience the can and the culture around it. It all goes into the taste, and you still prefer a Coke in a long-drink taste.
So, when is it good to think fast?
As I mentioned, thinking fast is not always bad. What you need to know is that you have a rapid-cognition system that makes thousands of decisions on your behalf every day. And therefore, in certain circumstances, you need to decide whether to take a step back and apply critical thought to your gut instinct. Gladwell reinforces that snap judgments work best when:
- The decision-maker has high expertise
- The situation is high-stakes and time-constrained (where overthinking would be detrimental and provided the expertise or experience is there
- The environment provides quick, reliable feedback (to calibrate judgement accordingly)
- The individual has learned to strip away noise
Watch out for (too) fast judgments
While Blink shows us that instinct can be powerful, it also reminds us that intuition isn’t always right — especially when it’s shaped by bias, fear, or incomplete information. Snap judgments can:
- Be influenced by unconscious stereotypes – and we are all very quick to think we are not biased. News – we are!
- Misfire under stress or high-stakes decisions, leading to misinterpretation and inability to assess cues;
- Be distorted by framing, marketing, or emotional manipulation – which we are exposed to every second of the day.
At the end of the day, your gut is only as good as the experience and reflection it’s built on. In leadership, this means:
- Pausing before reacting to first impressions.
- Being aware of who or what you’re dismissing too quickly — and asking why.
- Checking if your response is driven by (learned) intuition or instinctive bias.
This isn’t a call to reject intuition — but to approach it with healthy scepticism and use it wisely. Can you pause?
Photo by Noel Aph: