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Now I'm reading about "the power of thinking without thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell who is a staff writer for The New Yorker and used to be a science reporter for the Washington Post. It's absolutely fascinating.

The premise is this: our instincts often know more than our powers of analysis, and we should learn to respect our gut reactions. Further, and much more importantly, we can cultivate and control our "adaptive unconscious" so that it works more effectively to our advantage -- so that we can make snap judgements more accurately. For someone who has spent her entire life over-thinking almost everything on a daily basis, especially stupid things that don't even matter, this book offers some damn good news.

I've read only the intro and first chapter, but so far, the author has offered several studies as evidence. Subjects of one study who viewed just two-seconds of a teacher were able to predict his effectiveness with the same accuarcy as students who completed year-end evaluations.

In a second example, one psychologist has learned to predict with 90% accuracy whether a couple will stay together or divorce in the next fifteen years by observing just a 15-minute conversation between the couple. The key predictor: contempt. I've always thought that mutual respect and admiration were vital to a healthy relationship, and now there's evidence to back it up.

Another psychologist has shown that just by examining a dorm room for fifteen minutes, observers are able to rate the conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to new experiences of complete strangers better than long-term friends.

Other subjects rated four ten-second clips of interactions between doctors and patients using "content-filtered" audio to garble individual words but leave pitch and tone intact. Based on ratings of warmth or dominance, a psychologist was able to accurately predict whether or not the doctors would be sued for malpractice.

Anyway, we all make immediate judgements all the time -- but then we don't trust ourselves, or we allow ourselves to believe what we want to believe, or we get distracted by extraneous information. But it doesn't have to be that way...