Category: society

In a landmark study mentioned in the Malcolm Gladwell book, BLINK, a psychologist, John Gottman studied hundreds of couples and thin-sliced [ref] Thinslicing has been described by Malcolm Gladwell as our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, this is an idea that spontaneous decisions are often as good as, or even better than‚ carefully planned and considered ones.[/ref] one hour each of a random conversation between the two. The study's findings were startling: by studying that thin-slice of conversation you can predict with a 95% accuracy who was going to divorce or not. Gottman did this by extricating patterns of behavior--verbal and non-verbal cues, facial expression, heart rates, and fidget counts (how often and to what extent one or both of the couples fidget in their chair). He found out that what happens in just that hour of conversation is sacramental of where the whole relationship is and is predictive of where the relationship is going.