{"id":63352,"date":"2022-04-06T11:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=63352"},"modified":"2022-04-06T13:42:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T17:42:28","slug":"judge-personality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/judge-personality\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Judge a Personality Based on Little Information"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What’s the most effective way to size up someone’s personality? How much information do we really need to accurately size up a person’s qualities?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to reading personalities, we really don’t need much information. In fact, too much information can obscure the bigger picture with irrelevant details. Taking a “thin slice”\u2014an extremely small segment of information about a person’s life\u2014can lead to very accurate judgments about their personality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s why “thin-slicing” is the best way to judge a personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Judging a Person by Their College Dorm Room<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Psychologist Samuel Gosling found that our intuitive or snap judgments are surprisingly accurate when it comes to judging strangers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gosling asked 80 college students to fill out the Big Five Inventory, a widely used questionnaire that measures five personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to new experiences. (Shortform note: You can take the Big Five Inventory test here<\/a> to see how you stack up.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Gosling asked the close friends of those 80 students to rank them on the Big Five. Unsurprisingly, the friends showed that they knew the subjects pretty well. Each friend had a \u201cthick slice\u201d of experience with the subject, having spent a lot of time with him or her, and could judge their personality accurately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Gosling sent someone who had never met the subject into the subject\u2019s dorm room for 15 minutes. Gosling asked the stranger to assess the subject according to the five personality traits just by looking at that person\u2019s bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results: We Can Thin-Slice Someone\u2019s Bedroom<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Gosling discovered that you can make a surprisingly accurate judgment about someone you\u2019ve never met just by looking around his or her dorm room for 15 minutes<\/a>. (Shortform note: Gosling went on to write a book titled Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You<\/em><\/a>. A spin-off BBC3 show called Hot Property<\/em><\/a> <\/em>has would-be daters inspect the bedrooms of three potential dates and choose one to go on a date with.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friends, as expected, were more accurate in rating extraversion and agreeableness. However, strangers were more accurate in rating conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to new experiences.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? Bedrooms expose patterns. They give a peek into your private life that is revealing. <\/strong>An unmade bed, posters on the wall, or a fluffy ottoman can tell you just as much about a person as meeting him or her, if not more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bedroom without its occupant inside it contains well-selected information. It excludes distracting and irrelevant information. <\/strong>Stereotypes triggered by a subject\u2019s presence were absent. If you meet a quiet, econ major with glasses, you may never guess she\u2019s a hardcore heavy metal fan. If you judge her by her vinyl and paraphernalia collection, you get a different picture. The people themselves weren\u2019t there to get in the way. We can\u2019t view ourselves objectively, so we often say confusing or contradictory things about ourselves to other people. By just looking at someone\u2019s bedroom, we avoid this white noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Gladwell, this demonstrates that strangers who observe an extremely thin slice<\/a> of a person\u2019s life can make accurate judgments about that person\u2019s personality.<\/strong> As this example shows, sometimes, it\u2019s better to have a limited amount of information rather than a lot, as long as that information makes use of a pattern from which to extrapolate to the whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Size Instinct: The Problem With Having too Little Information<\/strong>

As Gladwell notes, in many circumstances, copious amounts of information are more distracting than helpful.

On the other hand, going with less isn\u2019t always better. If we rely too heavily on thin slices, we\u2019re in danger of succumbing to the size instinct<\/em>: the mistaken impulse to overestimate the importance of any single data point or incident, without putting it in the proper context.<\/strong> The size instinct can severely distort our worldview and cause us to devote disproportionate attention (and resources) to small details<\/a> and to the symptoms <\/em>of problems, rather than to large problems and their deeper root causes.

In Factfulness<\/em>, international health and development expert Hans Rosling illustrates how basing our decisions on a small amount of easily available information (the size instinct<\/em>) might get in the way of properly understanding and solving a problem<\/a>. He points out that according to raw figures, child mortality in Mozambique is extremely high. But if an aid organization starts building an expensive hospital on the basis of that figure alone, they\u2019re missing the point: Most sick children in Mozambique won\u2019t make it to the hospital in the first place. To avoid getting distracted by the size instinct, Rosling suggests that you break down and compare the numbers you\u2019re presented with. For example, before deciding to build a hospital, an aid organization could seek a more detailed breakdown on the causes of child mortality and determine whether the mortality rate is increasing or decreasing over time.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s the most effective way to size up someone’s personality? How much information do we really need to accurately size up a person’s qualities? When it comes to reading personalities, we really don’t need much information. In fact, too much information can obscure the bigger picture with irrelevant details. Taking a “thin slice”\u2014an extremely small segment of information about a person’s life\u2014can lead to very accurate judgments about their personality. Here’s why “thin-slicing” is the best way to judge a personality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,160],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-63352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-science","tag-blink","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Judge a Personality Based on Little Information - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What's the best way to size up someone's personality? 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