Blink: Conclusion Summary & Analysis

In the 1980s there was a professional trombone player named Abbie Conant. She received an invitation to audition for the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra—the invitation was addressed to “Herr Abbie Conant” (i.e., a man). Abbie participated in an initial blind audition for the orchestra (i.e., an audition where the judges sat behind a screen, couldn’t see the performer, and didn’t know her name), and impressed the orchestra’s music director, Sergiu Celibidache. But when Abbie showed up to the final, non-blind round of audition, the orchestra’s music director, Celibidache, was appalled—he’d been expecting a man. Abbie, a highly talented musician, ended up being offered a position with the orchestra, despite Celibidache’s objections. After a year of playing with the orchestra, Abbie was surprised to learn that she’d been demoted from first to second trombone—as Celibidache told her, “We need a man.” Abbie was understandably furious, and sued the Munich Philharmonic. Abbie won her case and was reinstated as first trombone because she had proof that Celibidache respected her talent—during the initial blind auditions (i.e., before he knew Abbie was a woman), Celibidache had been highly impressed with Abbie’s performance. In short, Abbie was “saved by a screen.”

For hundreds of years, European classical music was written and performed by men, and no one else. It was believed that women were too delicate and timid to compose or perform truly sublime music. In the last few decades, however, there’s been a revolution in classical music: women have begun to perform in the world’s greatest orchestras. One reason that this revolution occurred, Gladwell argues, is that orchestras began to use blind auditions to select their performers. The advantages of blind auditions are obvious: in the classical music world, there are very strong negative stereotypes associated with women, and eliminating these stereotypes through a screening process allows female musicians to be judged purely on the merits of their music.

Perhaps the question we should ask isn’t, “Why did the classic music world remain sexist for so long?” but rather, “Why were musicians so oblivious to their own sexism?” The answer, Gladwell has shown, is that people can be oblivious to their own powers of rapid cognition: they can’t explain where their first impressions come from. However, “by changing the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, we can control rapid cognition.” The introduction of blind auditions is a proven example of how seemingly trivial environmental changes can control rapid cognition and eliminate troubling biases.

Gladwell concludes with one final example of the power of rapid cognition. Several years ago, a musician named Julie Landsman auditioned to play the French horn at the New York Metropolitan Opera. During her blind audition, Landsman played brilliantly, easily winning a position as first horn. The panel that selected Landsman for the Met reported knowing that Landsman was the best candidate for the job after listening to her play for just a few seconds—a perfect example of rapid cognition. Had they seen Landsman play, however, their rapid cognition might have led them to judge her performance more harshly. In short, blind auditions created “the kind of small miracle that is always possible when we take charge of the first two seconds”: the panel saw Landsman “for who she truly was.”