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Malcolm—

I think your point that more information is not always better for decision-making is an important one. There's a famous study that was done of expert racetrack bettors that illustrates this point. The bettors were first given five pieces of information about the horses in a race and asked to predict the outcome. They were also asked how confident they were in their predictions. Then they were given, successively, 10, 20, and 40 pieces of information and asked to make predictions. The additional information didn't make their forecasts any more accurate. But it did make them (falsely) more confident in their forecasts. When it comes to data, frugality is often a virtue.

But there is a problem here that I think you glided over in your last entry, which is that it's often hard to know in advance which information is, in your words, "central to the outcome of a decision" and which is irrelevant or, even more important, corrupting. And figuring out which information really does matter (so we can make our decision-making more disciplined) isn't something we can do with rapid cognition. It often requires the careful study of data to see what factors are and aren't correlated with each other, and it requires an analytic approach that seems to belong more to the Standard Model. The decision to have people audition behind a screen wasn't made in a second, I imagine.

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For me, this is the deep paradox at the heart of Blink, which is that rapid cognition often works best when there are well-defined rules or structures to guide the people using it. As you put it, we need a structure for spontaneity. We usually think of intuition as simply going with your gut, and obviously that is in part what rapid cognition is about. But I think what Blink shows, oddly, is that going with your gut will often lead you astray, if you're not keenly aware of the flaws that might be shaping your decision. Successful thin-slicing happens very quickly, but it requires a keen sense of self-awareness, too.

For all of my critique of experts, I think it's clear that much of the time they do have that sense of self-awareness, that ability to recognize what information matters and what doesn't. It may not always be articulated, but as you show, if you ask people who are excellent at thin-slicing to explain how they reached their decisions, it's clear that they're instantaneously screening out the irrelevant and letting in what matters. Their experience, their vast store of memories, and (I suspect) something special about the way they're hardwired allow them, in a sense, to structure their own spontaneity. This doesn't always work well, and they can still benefit from a more disciplined approach (as in the example of classical-music auditions), but a lot of the time this approach yields great results.

I am more skeptical, though, of the idea that everyone can learn to thin-slice consistently well, and that therefore it's a good idea for most people to rely on rapid cognition. When I look at the kinds of experts you write about—from firefighters to art critics to George Soros—I'm struck by two things: First, these people have spent an enormous amount of time working in their given fields; and second, I think they're probably naturally exceptional at pattern recognition. I'm just not sure that most people, even with more experience and even with the right structures in place, are going to make consistently better decisions via rapid cognition. In fact, as you point out, there are some situations in which it isn't even clear you want individuals making decisions: Cook County Hospital dramatically improved its record of distinguishing patients who were having heart attacks from patients who weren't by replacing the judgment of individual doctors with a simple algorithm.

My doubts aren't about the virtues of thin-slicing. I've thought for a while now that one of the reasons why the collective decision-making mechanisms I write about in my book—like, for instance, betting markets—work well is that in part they aggregate intuitions and impressions that people can't necessarily articulate, but that are nonetheless real and valuable. That's why I think Blink and The Wisdom of Crowds really do fit together. My qualms, really, have to do with the idea that for most people, the combination of rapid cognition and individual decision-making does make it harder to spot potential pitfalls and to correct mistakes in time to make a difference. I'm sure the collective product of our rapid cognitive judgments will usually be excellent. But when it comes to the average individual, I still wonder.

I guess I'll end with this question: At the beginning of your book you tell the story of experts recognizing at a glance that a Greek statue is a fake. At the end of the book you tell the story of four ordinary cops not recognizing in a glance that Amadou Diallo was an innocent man instead of a dangerous criminal. Is one of these stories a truer example of rapid cognition in action? And if (as I hope) it's the former, is there a way for ordinary decision-makers to make themselves more like those art experts and less like those cops?

In any case, I've had a great time. I hope we talk more about all this going forward. Thanks for doing this with me.

Best,
Jim

Hi Jim,

You are quite right to point out that I'm deeply ambivalent about rapid cognition. When it works—as when an art expert can identify a fake in a glance—it can be truly spectacular. But as you point out, most of us aren't capable of those kinds of spectacular feats, and if we are to engage in successful rapid cognition, we need a lot of help. Yesterday I talked about what happened when the classical music world put up screens in auditions: That's a great example of help. In order to make for a successful snap judgment, you have to carefully and deliberately intervene in the decision-making environment.

This idea is at the heart of what I consider (if I'm allowed to be immodest for a moment) to be the strongest chapter in Blink—the retelling of the story of the shooting of Amadou Diallo five years ago in the South Bronx. The police saw a black man—Diallo—pulling a shiny dark object out of his jacket, thought it was a gun, and shot him 41 times. Only after he lay dead in the vestibule of his apartment did they realize that what he was pulling out of his pocket was his wallet. Now, what should we do with this story? One response is simply to call it an inevitable byproduct of racism: Four white cops from Long Island confront a black man in the South Bronx and jump to an immediate, prejudicial conclusion. My problem with that analysis, though, is that it's not terribly useful because it says that the only way to prevent cops from making racist snap judgments is to get rid of racist cops. Is that really possible? I'm not sure that it is, anymore than it's possible to ensure that the heads of orchestras don't harbor sexist ideas about musicianship in their unconscious. What you can do, though, is find ways to mitigate the effects of those biased snap judgments, find ways of structuring encounters between officers and suspects so that racist impulses don't matter nearly as much.

For instance, one of the really interesting facts about police work is that an officer behaves much better—makes better decisions, fires his gun less frequently, has fewer complaints filed against him—when he is by himself than when he is paired with a partner. Officers on their own are far more cautious. Without the emboldening presence of a companion, they take far fewer risks. They don't pick fights, or put themselves into nearly as many ambiguous or dangerous situations, because they know they have no one looking out for them. How many officers were involved in the Diallo shooting? Four. That's a crucial fact. When they spotted Diallo and Diallo turned and ran back into his house, two officers provided backup in the car, and the other two gave chase. If Diallo had been spotted by a policeman operating alone, that officer would never have given chase, and as a result, he would never have been put into the position of making that terrible snap judgment. He would have stopped the car, taken cover behind it, called for backup. And Amadou Diallo would still be alive.

Or consider the issue of high-speed chases. We tend to think that high-speed chases are a problem because of the dangers they pose during the chase. That's true enough. But the real problem is the danger they pose after the chase. I cannot tell you how many cops I talked to who spoke of how disoriented and crazed and incoherent they were after racing after someone through streets at 120 miles per hour. You finally cut off the suspect's car. You charge out of the cruiser. You yank open his door. Your pulse is 175. Your heart is in your throat. Your body is awash in adrenalin and cortisol. And everything we know about human physiology and psychology says that no one can make intelligent snap decisions under those circumstances. So what should we do? Precisely what one police department after another around the country is now doing: ban high-speed chases. It was only when I talked to cops about this that I began to understand why so many people—particularly in the LAPD—are still angry over the charge that the Rodney King beating was the result of racism. Racism? This was a group of cops encountering a suspect after a terrifying high-speed chase. In that state, they would have beaten him up if he was a WASP from Bel Air.

So have I answered your question? I think ordinary people can be good snap decision-makers, so long as they get a little help. Sometimes that help is best found in the prescriptions put forth in The Wisdom of Crowds. (And if I were to make a criticism of Blink, it's that I'm not sure that the implications of my analysis are as clear as the implications of yours.) But sometimes I think we can achieve the same goals by tinkering with the environment in which decisions are made—like putting up screens or limiting ourselves to one officer per squad car. That, at least, is the hope behind Blink. I'll be interested to see if those who read it have the same generous and thoughtful response as you did, Jim.

Thanks,
M

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