{"id":775,"date":"2019-08-30T10:09:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T14:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=775"},"modified":"2022-03-04T16:31:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T20:31:32","slug":"thin-slicing-malcolm-gladwell-blink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/thin-slicing-malcolm-gladwell-blink\/","title":{"rendered":"Thin Slicing: How to Make Smart Decisions, Fast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Do you ever get overwhelmed when trying to make a decision<\/a>? Do you find that the more information you have, the harder the decision-making<\/a> process becomes? How does thin-slicing help you make better decisions<\/a> in the blink of an eye?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In thin-slicing, your brain trusts your gut, and this may be the smartest thing you can do when making tough decisions<\/a>. Learn how to use the concept of “thin-slicing” to make the smartest decision, big or small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

What is Thin-Slicing?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Thin-slicing is the process by which our unconscious minds find patterns in situations based on thin slices of experience.<\/strong> Psychologists use the idea of \u201cthin-slicing\u201d to explain how our unconscious minds can be so efficient at making snap judgments<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our unconscious minds are frugal. They don\u2019t need a lot of information to make a decision. When we thin-slice, our unconscious picks out the information that is relevant and leaves the rest.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, the unconscious mind<\/a> has the advantage over the conscious one. The conscious mind<\/a> isn\u2019t as good at parsing information. It gets bogged down by details that are distracting, overwhelming, irrelevant, and misleading. Additionally, it picks through this information slowly, and sometimes makes decisions based on information that\u2019s not even relevant. In contrast, the unconscious mind can assess available information in seconds and zero in on the most pertinent details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all thin-slice, all the time. But we can make our thin-slicing even more reliable and efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychologist John Gottman and his \u201clove lab\u201d<\/a> provide a good analogy for what\u2019s happening in our brains when we thin-slice.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Love Lab<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Since the 1980s, more than 3,000 married couples have taken part in Gottman\u2019s research at the University of Washington. His overall goal is to understand what makes relationships healthy. The goal of this particular study is to show that, if you know how to \u201cthin-slice\u201d a marriage\u2014that is, if you know which information is relevant and which isn\u2019t\u2014you can accurately predict the future<\/a> of a marriage.<\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottman and his researchers videotape couples having a \u201cmeaningful interaction.\u201d This could be discussing a point of contention or talking about how they met.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coding Emotions<\/strong>: An Analogy for Thin-Slicing<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, Gottman trains all his researchers to read subjects\u2019 emotions based on fleeting facial expressions and seemingly trivial dialogue. Each emotion has its own numerical code, and when they watch the videos, researchers assign a code to each second of the conversation. For example, disgust is coded with the number 1, contempt is 2, and whining is 11.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the layman, a couple may seem to be happily having an innocuous conversation. But their veiled expressions and word choices may say otherwise. Through their second-by-second coding, trained researchers pick up on subtle facial and verbal cues that otherwise go unnoticed.<\/strong> Gottman uses this coding system, combined with data from the sensors, to assess the current health of a relationship and predict its future.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Gottman can analyze an hour-long conversation and predict with 95% accuracy whether or not the couple will still be married in 15 years. He can analyze 15 minutes of the conversation and predict with 90% accuracy who will remain married. Even more impressive, one of Gottman\u2019s colleagues can watch only 3 minutes of a couple\u2019s conversation and accurately predict whether or not they will stay married<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Gottman\u2019s Work in the \u201cLove Lab\u201d is Like Thin-Slicing<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What does this have to do with thin-slicing? The \u201clove lab\u201d example doesn\u2019t show thin-slicing at work, but serves as an analogy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thin-slicing takes place in the unconscious mind. Conversely, Gottman and his researchers arrive at their predictions through a very deliberate, conscious method. They use a lot of data to make their predictions. They\u2019re not guessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Gottman\u2019s love lab<\/a> research provides a great model for what\u2019s happening in our brains when we thin-slice. Our brains do a quick and unconscious version of what Gottman does when he consciously analyzes his data.<\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottman\u2019s work provides two important takeaways<\/strong> that help us understand how the unconscious mind works when it thin-slices:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson #1: The Process of Thin-Slicing Identifies Patterns<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

These are patterns, or \u201csignatures,\u201d that the conscious mind doesn\u2019t pick up. The unconscious mind makes decisions based on these patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, predicting divorce<\/a> involves identifying the patterns of unhealthy relationships. Gottman\u2019s work demonstrates that all marriages have a \u201cmarital DNA\u201d that underlies all of the couple\u2019s meaningful interactions. It wouldn\u2019t take Gottman\u2019s team long to identify what your relationship\u2019s pattern is. Maybe you repeatedly ask for credit, and your spouse repeatedly withholds it. Maybe whenever you and your partner have a disagreement, no matter how minor, your partner is inflexible. If these types of interactions show up regularly in a span of 15 minutes, they\u2019re probably part of your marital DNA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottman and his team \u201cthin-slice\u201d a marriage by looking at a narrow sliver of it\u2014one hour of conversation, or even 15 minutes\u2014and finding the pattern. Then they make an inference about the entire marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Gottman\u2019s team, the unconscious mind takes a thin slice of experience and quickly recognizes patterns in it.<\/strong> It then makes an inference about a current situation based on the patterns of similar experiences in the past.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson #2: The Process of Thin-Slicing is Frugal<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The unconscious mind doesn\u2019t need a lot of information to do its job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottman\u2019s work demonstrates the benefits of frugality when making a decision. Too much information can overwhelm our decision-making abilities. Gottman has found that we don\u2019t need to pay attention to every emotion when predicting the success of a marriage. We can narrow our focus. Thin-slicing works similarly, swiftly prioritizing information and zeroing in on the most important factors.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Study: Less Information Leads to More Accurate Predictions <\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottman\u2019s researchers gave some of his 3-minute clips to marriage counselors, psychology students, marital researchers, and others who knew a lot about marriage. Even though they were experts, they were only able to predict divorces about 54% of the time, which is not much better than chance. Why did they have so much trouble?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The videos showed the marital patterns of each couple, but the marriage counselors and other specialists had a hard time picking them out because the videos contained so many red herrings. Individuals may express dozens of subtle emotions in a span of three minutes. Such a large amount of information is overwhelming.<\/strong> How do you know what\u2019s important?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you narrow your focus<\/a> to just four problematic emotions and attitudes (defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt), you can disregard the other data points and still make an accurate prediction about the health of a marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can further narrow your focus to a single emotion, contempt, and still predict a marriage\u2019s future pretty accurately. If you detect contempt in a 3-minute clip, you don\u2019t need to know anything else about a couple\u2019s relationship to know if it\u2019s in trouble. It is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way Gottman zeroes in on the most important pieces of information is similar to what our unconscious minds do when they thin-slice. The unconscious lasers in on the most significant details and disregards the rest.<\/strong> Consequently, thin-slicing allows for speedy decision-making, since it doesn\u2019t involve processing a lot of information.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that we have a better sense of what our brain does when it thin-slices, let\u2019s look at a study that shows the accuracy of thin-slicing in judging people\u2019s personalities.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thin-Slicing: Judging a Person By His College Dorm Room<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Psychologist Samuel Gosling wanted to know how accurate our intuitive judgments are when it comes to judging strangers. How well can we thin-slice people?<\/strong>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Gosling asked 80 college students to fill out the Big Five Inventory, a respected questionnaire that measures five personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to new experiences.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, Gosling asked the close friends of those 80 students to rank them on the Big Five. Gosling compared the questionnaires of the subjects with their friends\u2019 rankings. 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 the subject\u2019s 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. This is the process of thin-slicing: using a limited amount of information to make a quick, unconscious decision.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Result<\/strong>s of Thin-Slicing<\/h4>\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. This is the power of thin-slicing.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friends, as expected, were more accurate in rating extraversion and agreeableness. However, strangers, who had to thin-slice, 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>Dirty laundry on the floor, an alphabetized CD collection, or a scented candle on the desk 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 in it, is frugal. It excludes distracting and irrelevant information. <\/strong>Stereotypes triggered by a subject\u2019s presence were absent. If you meet a 275-pound lineman, it\u2019s hard to believe he could enjoy intellectual pursuits<\/a>. If you judge him by the books in his bedroom, 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

Strangers observing an extremely thin slice 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. Thin-slicing helps us make the best decision with limited, but relevant, information.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you ever get overwhelmed when trying to make a decision? Do you find that the more information you have, the harder the decision-making process becomes? How does thin-slicing help you make better decisions in the blink of an eye? In thin-slicing, your brain trusts your gut, and this may be the smartest thing you can do when making tough decisions. Learn how to use the concept of “thin-slicing” to make the smartest decision, big or small.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","tag-blink","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nThin Slicing: How to Make Smart Decisions, Fast - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Do you struggle to make decisions? Thin-slicing can help. 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