Last April, at the FEI World Cup Finals in Las Vegas, my friend Jim Lewis gave me a book as a present and pronounced, “All judges should read this.”

The book was the bestseller Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, and it makes some powerful points about how our brains function in decision-making.

The book’s premise is to show the power we have to think without thinking. In other words, it addresses our inherent ability to make decisions without gathering information or deliberating.

How many times have you met someone you instantly disliked, even before they said, “Hello”?

You know nothing about the person, but all your instincts tell you to stay away even before he or she has uttered an entire sentence. If you become more familiar with the person, does that first impression prove to be the one that persists, or do you later change your mind?

Or the opposite happens–you have an immediate feeling of comfort and joy in the presence of a perfect stranger. If you get to know this person, it usually proves to be the lasting impression over time.

In a weekend of judging, a judge has to make thousands of instant decisions, and this book is about exactly that–first impressions, which Gladwell calls the process of “thin slicing.”

What we judges pass on to our scribes is our very first impression of every movement produced in the test. Sometimes we wonder, after the test has left with the runner, if a certain movement shouldn’t have had a higher or lower score, and sometimes we even wish we could change the score.

But as a rule, it’s not a good thing to fool with the score that comes up in your mind as you watch the movement. The instant instinct is mostly the correct one, and if you deliberate too long, the moment is lost and you cannot recapture the true essence of what went on. Your instincts become weaker as you analyze the movement. You go off in a different direction, and it’s not necessarily the correct one.

Since most of our judging is instant feedback without any time to reflect or reconsider, it’s comforting to read a book that supports the argument that our instinctive first impressions are the ones that prove to be true, even after close scrutinizing and research.

Blink has a number of examples to show that first impressions and “thin slicing” are reliable methods for finding the truth.

My favorite is the very first one, which describes a rare find for the Getty Museum in California of a Kourus, a statue of a nude male youth, of which only about 200 are known to exist.

This one was very well preserved, which was unusual, and although the museum’s directors moved with utmost caution, consulting with several experts, the Kourus passed every scrutiny with flying colors. After months of deliberation, they were ready to make the purchase.

But suddenly trouble arrived in the form of doubters who were, indeed, very knowledgeable, but based their doubt about the statue’s authenticity not on their expertise, but solely on a “feeling.”

One said he couldn’t help looking at the fingernails, but he could not articulate exactly what was wrong with them. A second was overwhelmed by the statue’s “freshness” when it was unveiled in front of him. A third immediately disliked the color of the stone, which he felt looked like it was dipped in coffee latte from Starbucks.

Well, all these people ended up being right. After exhausting research, the statue was, indeed, proven to be a fake.

What’s interesting is that, although all the doubters were experts, none of them used scientific methods or even reason to conclude that the statue was a phony. They all just looked at it and immediately felt an “intuitive repulsion.” It took the research team at the Getty Museum 14 months to come to the same conclusion.

The very best dressage judges are those with that really keen instinct for what’s going on. They have a “feel” for the game, almost as if they were riding the horse along with the rider. I’ve sat with, worked with, and ridden in front of several judges I admire because they have that extra ingredient–not only can they place the classes right on target, but they also have a special “beam” that absorbs and evaluates the horse’s effort as it’s happening, and with no hesitation.

My main hero among judges is one many people agree was a genius, and I’m so glad I got to spend time with him before he died. His name was Jaap Pot, and he was a human judging machine. He never forgot a horse or a movement, and yet he had a wonderfully positive attitude and an open mind.

His judges’ seminars were a treat to those of us lucky enough to attend because he had a “feel” for judging, rather like Herbert Rehbein had a feel for riding a horse. And, just as with Herbert, almost all of it was pure instinct.

In the last chapter of Blink, the author gives us another example that we can relate to, but which hits home in a different way. In 1980, the Munich (Germany) Philharmonic Orchestra needed a musician to play the first trombone. In fairness to the players, the audition was done with the players performing behind a screen. And 23 candidates later, the auditors were unanimous about whom they wanted: player No. 16.

They were stunned when a woman, Abbie Conant, walked on to the stage. The chaos was total, because everyone knew that a woman was too weak to play the trombone properly, and, furthermore, it was just against the unwritten rules of tradition to have a woman in the position of first trombone. Everyone back-peddled as fast as they could, and only after eight years and many tours through the courts, did Frau Conant get reinstated in the position she’d earned behind the screen.

When we listen to music without looking at the performers, do we see it differently? It sure appears that way.

So, if dressage judges were truly unaware of who was riding the horse, or what breed it was, would the scores come out the same as when they do know the rider and the breed?

If five computers could be programmed with all the specifications for riding the perfect test (and anyone remained alive after the battle over how they should be programmed!), do you think we would still see the same horses and riders on top all the time?

When competitors jokingly say to each other, “We should all enter with paper bags on our heads and no numbers,” are they really only kidding?

Read the book, and see what you come up with–in a blink.