In his 2005 book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell is certain to make another impact on business and society as a whole. Blink focuses on “rapid cognition,” or quick thinking — the split-second mental processing that leads us to sometimes make great decisions, and other times to make tragic mistakes. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating.

It also introduces another buzzword, “thin-slicing,” that seems certain to enter the business vocabulary. The term refers to focusing on the few factors that matter — and discarding everything that is irrelevant.

In other words, it's possible to gain important information and make good decisions from very narrow slices of experience. As Gladwell writes on his Web site, Gladwell.com, “We live in a society dedicated to the idea that we're always better off gathering as much information and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. As children, this lesson is drummed in us again and again: Haste makes waste; look before you leap; stop and think. But I don't think this is true. There are lots of situations — particularly at times of high pressure and stress — when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions offer a much better means of making sense of the world.”

In the book, Gladwell reveals how people can often make amazingly accurate decisions based on details, impressions, and feelings — better decisions, in fact, than those arrived at by people who ponder and analyze at great length.

This article is from a book review by Richard Lalich.

Victims of childhood bullying may face a higher risk of displaying psychotic symptoms in early adolescence, according to research published in the May Archives of General Psychiatry.

Andrea Schreier, Ph.D., of the University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom, and colleagues analyzed data from 6,437 children in a prospective cohort study. The children's history of being bullied was assessed using personal interviews and parent and teacher reports at ages 8 and 10, and psychosis-like symptoms were assessed in the children at a mean age of 12.9.

The researchers found that children who had been bullied had nearly double the risk of psychotic symptoms (odds ratio, 1.94); a similar relationship was found when using teachers' and mothers' reports of bullying. Bullying that was long-term or severe was linked to stronger associations with psychotic symptoms (odds ratios up to 4.60).

"Whether repeated victimization experiences alter cognitive and affective processing or reprogram stress response or whether psychotic symptoms are more likely due to genetic predisposition still needs to be determined in further research. A major implication is that chronic or severe peer victimization has nontrivial, adverse, long-term consequences," the authors write. "Reduction of peer victimization and of the resulting stress caused to victims could be a worthwhile target for prevention and early intervention efforts for common mental health problems and psychosis."

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