Serendipity-that's the best way to describe my decision to read Robert Burton's book On Being Certain right after I read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Both books present intriguing and compelling arguments; yet they conflict.
Gladwell weaves an interesting tale (through science and anecdote) of why we should trust the judgments that we make "in the blink of an eye"-especially when we have trained ourselves well in some particular area. He states, "The power of knowing, in that first two seconds, ...is an ability that we can all cultivate for ourselves." (p. 16)
Burton, a neurologist, lays out the science behind our sense of being absolutely certain of something (in the blink of an eye, or otherwise). He argues that this sense is akin to an emotion-we experience it as real even when the facts don't support it. In his Preface, he states, "Despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of ‘knowing what we know' arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason." Later, he specifically challenges Gladwell's argument that people can train themselves to make rational snap judgments that are accurate. He argues that our strong sense of knowing will often "overpower and outsmart the intellect."
As I see it, both authors would agree that there are things you can do to increase the accuracy of your judgments and beliefs. Gladwell offers the interesting point that you can develop an expertise that includes complex understandings that sometimes occur unconsciously; it is these understandings that underlie snap judgments. Along similar lines, Burton explains that our unconscious filters out many thoughts so that our conscious minds only have to consider those worth pursuing; one result of this is that complex judgments sometimes seem to occur to us without much thought.
Where Burton and Gladwell part ways is in how much to trust our judgments. While Gladwell concedes, at times, that our snap judgments can be wrong, he still asserts that "if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition. We can prevent the people fighting wars or staffing emergency rooms or policing the streets from making mistakes." (p. 253) The implication is that controlled rapid cognition (snap judgments) can be fully trusted. It is this kind of certainty that Burton refutes. He asserts that you can't know whether unconscious thinking is producing accurate judgments. So, he advises that we proceed cautiously with any judgment, taking it as a hypothesis to be considered rather than an absolute conclusion.
What makes all of this particularly interesting to me, as a clinical psychologist, is that I can see how their arguments relate to personal change. Very often, in order to change, people need to challenge the things that they know about themselves and the world. A depressed person must allow for the possibility that he can feel better about life; and that he can make that happen. An overweight person must learn to see the relationship between her eating and her emotions or experiences; and to then to find new ways to respond.
Such personal changes begin with us accessing our unconscious; learning to be open to what we don't know, and to reconsider what we think we already know. We need to make our thinking more complex, to increase the likelihood of making healthier and more constructive snap judgments, and to remaining open to the uncertainty about whether our judgments and beliefs are true.
Dr. Leslie Becker-Phelps is a clinical psychologist in private practice and is on the medical staff at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, NJ.
