Blog 3- The Theory of Thin Slices: How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way

Chapter One: The Theory of Thin Slices: How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way

The main idea of this chapter is something called “Thin-slicing” which refers to “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.” This basically means, making quick assumptions, before actually doing research on the topic.  This chapter talks about John Gottman, who is a psychologist working at the University of Washington.  He videotapes married couples having a 15-minute conversation.  The topic can be anything, but the one he used was that they needed to talk about their dog.  After 15 minutes, John Gottman would analyze the video, looking at the facial expressions, gestures, and tones of their voice, and he would be able to conclude if the couple will end up divorcing in the future, or not. “We thin-slice whenever we meet a new person or have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation.” I found this quote very interesting, since everybody “thin-slices” without even knowing.  This chapter is full of examples of “thin-slicing”.  It can be seen in basketball, bird watching, or even in the military.  Where people need to draw conclusions in a short and quick amount of time, we are able to make accurate assumptions on a limited amount of information.  The decisions we end up with are quite accurate and conclusive based on the information we know.  

I really liked this chapter because of all of the different scenarios, where thin- slicing is seen. In particular, I thought it was very cool how in one of his experiments, he got random strangers to go into students dorm rooms, and they had 15 minutes to analyze the room and answer a short questionnaire, regarding the personalities of the students.  These students were able to come up with very accurate results.  “They were more accurate at measuring conscientiousness, and they were much more accurate at predicting both the students emotional stability and their openness to new experiences.  On balance, then, the strangers ended up doing a much better job”. What this suggests is that it is quite possible for people who have never met us and who have spent only twenty minutes thinking about us to come to a better understanding of who we are than people who have known us for years.” This chapter relates back to the main idea of the book, which is looking at the unconscious mind, and rapid cognition. This book focuses on how “thin-slicing” is much quicker, and usually accurate in determining conclusions, and going with our gut feeling as opposed to making a decision on the facts that we have before us.  Thin slicing is the means of making wise decisions based on limited information that we have on hand.