To be clear, I don't care what "real passion" really is. I just care about selecting a candidate who is interested in what we work on, and not just for the money.

Interviewing is just a screening process, and of course fluster increases the risk of a false negative, but in that situation I'm much more concerned with false positives, and in that respect: No, watching also the body language for that kind of question isn't deceptively informative; it's much more informative than reading the same answer from a written text.

I thought Blink primarily showed how first impressions can be more correct than considered and careful reasoning.

That was my first impression too.

Funny.

Looks like it's about both. It had been a while since I'd read it. The downside of snap judgements is obvious, so I remembered the more interesting part, where trained experts' snap judgements are actually good.