Thin-slicing is a term used in psychology and philosophy to describe the ability to find patterns in events based only on "thin slices", or narrow windows, of experience. The term refers to the process of making very quick inferences about the state, characteristics or details of an individual or situation with minimal amounts of information. Research has found that brief judgments based on thin-slicing are similar to those judgments based on much more information. Judgments based on thin-slicing can be as accurate, or even more so, than judgments based on much more information. The first recorded use of the term was in 1992 by Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal in a meta-analysis in the Psychological Bulletin. Since then, thin-slicing has been applied to many domains, and has been used to make various types of judgments. A non-exhaustive list of domains includes interpersonal relationship, clinical studies, education, etc.
Overview Thin slices of the behavioral stream contain important diagnostic and predictive social psychological information. Because thin-slice perception and judgment is sufficiently effective, people's interpersonal perceptions can occur immediately, automatically, and to some extent validly before much can be communicated verbally or through actions and events. Given the limited conditions under which social inference and correction occur, these initial judgments may determine people's ultimate perceptions, evaluations, and theories about those with whom they interact face-to-face. Many studies have shown that brief observations can be used to assess outcomes at levels higher than expected by chance. Once comparing these observations of less than five minutes to those greater than five minutes, the data show no significant change, thus implying that observations made within the first few minutes are unchanging. An example of this can be seen in an Ambady and Rosenthal experiment in 1993, in which they assessed the effect of thin slicing with 2-, 5-, and 10-second clips of non-verbal behaviors of teachers and the viewers' ratings of those teachers afterwards. Impressions formed after viewing thin slices of behavior are considered accurate if they match impressions formed after a more detailed observation of the subject and if they match the impressions formed by other raters. While people are often not able to report the factors that influence their judgments, researchers identify types of information in brief slices of behavior that are responsible for accurate judgments. Types of information include visual and verbal information. More specifically, researchers look at how people make judgments based on their observations of others' minor traits such as eye contact, fidgeting, open-handed gestures, stiff posture, smiling, etc. Behaviors such as frowning, fidgeting, and gazing down had poor ratings for traits describing the teacher's confidence, warmth and optimism while teachers with positive ratings for these traits smiled more, were more likely to walk around and touch their upper torsos. Ambady and Rosenthal ultimately found that those who rated the teachers after being subjected to thin slicing produced ratings that were very similar to those who rated the teachers after having substantial interactions with them. Additionally, the accuracy of these ratings was not significantly different among those who saw the 2-, 5- and 10-second clips. This demonstrates the impressive amount of information that is conveyed in thin slices of everyday behavior and the insight that it can provide about an individual's personality, no matter how briefly the behavior is observed.
Domains People would expect that thin slices of themselves only reveal socially valued characteristics. Otherwise, they would be more willing to reveal minor imperfections about themselves before others make inferences based on their observations. Nonetheless, both desirable and undesirable characteristics are usually visible through the peephole of thin slices. Thin slices of individuals' behaviors could expose characteristics of their personality, internal states, sexuality, relationship, biases, etc. Even individuals' future behaviors could be predicted with reasonable accuracy through thin slicing.
Interpersonal relationship
First impression In the research paper published in 2007 by Dana R. Carney et al., it was discovered that increased exposure time, i.e. length of the slice, helped people to obtain more information, so that they could better judge social approach and positive affect. The same increased length of the slice was less related to judging threats and negative affect. The accuracy of the judgement based on a five-second long slice is significantly lower than the accuracy of judgments based on longer exposures. Also, slices extracted from the later stage of the interaction potentially allowed people to make more accurate judgments. Dana R. Carney et al. also drew the conclusion that women tended to make more accurate judgments using thin slicing than did men.
Speed dating Marian L. Houser et al. built on Deyo & Deyo's earlier work and studied thin slicing in speed dating. They found out that a few moments of communication evaluation in speed dating indeed helped the participants to predict outcomes and make speculated assessments of their relationship with the potential mate. Female speed daters noted male negative characteristics rather quickly, and were generally more critical. This could mean that males were more open-minded or at least slower to identify the negative characteristics, meaning that they were less reactive in comparison to females when doing thin slicing. While both sexes were equally good in making positive evaluations about their partners, females made more specific descriptions than males, and males might engage in observing the superficial if they only noticed negative characteristics in the beginning of the date. Still, the overall result showed that speed dating did make the participants look more favorable in each other's eyes.
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