Malcolm Gladwell
• Canadian raised New
Yorker journalist.
• One of Time’s 100
most influential
people for 2005
• Studies of social
biology
• Might be distantly
related to Colin
Powell. What do you
think?
Chapter 1: Thin Slicing
• What’s this all about?
– Rapid Cognition. The
thoughts you process in
the blink of an eye.
– You meet someone and
make conclusions in
two seconds.
– Call it intuition?
– When is it better to take
time
• It’s an intellectual
adventure.
Where’d this idea
come from?
• Look at his hair.
– Used to be short.
– Grew it out on a whim
• Changed his life
– Tickets
– Attention from airport security
– Mistaken for a rapist by cops once.
• The rapist was bigger, way younger, and didn’t
look like him, but it’s the hair.
• Imagine there’s a
game.
• 4 decks of cards,
2 blue, 2 red.
• You draw cards
at your choice. 1
at a time.
• Some cards win
you money, some
take it away.
• You’re trying to
win the most
money.
• Secrets to the game,
• Red decks are a mix of a
few big winnings, but
even more losings.
• The only way to come
out ahead is to keep
taking from the blue
decks, they have a
steady moderate pay
outs, with fewer, smaller
penalties.
So what?
• U. of Iowa scientists did this.
• After ~ 50 cards people get the secret.
They don’t know why, but they know the
blue decks are better.
• That makes sense
What’s cool?
• They hooked the players up to machines to
monitor sweat on palms.
– We sweat when nervous.
• Players sweated (showed stress) at 10 cards
in.
– This is when behavior started changing too.
– They had figured out the game, 40 cards before
they knew they had figured out the game.
It’s spidey sense.
The mind operates most
efficiently by relegating a
good deal of high-level,
sophisticated thinking to
the unconscious, like a jet
on automatic pilot. It
sizes up the world, warns
of danger, sets goals, and
starts action for us.
-Tim Wilson,
Strangers to Ourselves
• How long does it take you to decide if you like a teacher?
– A study: Show students ten sec. clips of a teacher, they’ve never
met, with no sound, and they can say how effective the teacher is
– Cut it back to 5 seconds, then 2 seconds and you get similar results
– What happens in those 2 seconds?
Archie’s teachers.
• Have you ever had the feeling that a
couple’s future is successful or doomed by
watching a brief exchange between them?
What are you picking up on?
• If there is a psychologist who is 95%
accurate in predicting whether a couple
will stay married or get divorced would you
take your newlywed wife to see him?
• John Gottman: Conscientious objector to
Vietnam, still strikes you as a bit of a hippie.
• Takes short (15 min) clips of couples talking.
– Hooked up to electrodes, sensors, pressure meters
under their seats.
– Dissects the clips second by second, categorizing
emotions, by what they say and do.
– 95% accurate at predicting the relationship’s
outcome.
• This isn’t “thin slicing, it’s the opposite, but
it shows that we reveal things about
ourselves nonverbally that we don’t intend
to. And some people are great at
capitalizing on that for the big win.
What about divorce, ect?
• Guys get defensive, they use “yes-but” appear to
agree to avoid conflict when there really is a
conflict.
• People ask for validation or credit, partners don’t
give it. Can’t say, “you’re right”
• Four horsemen of bad relationship:
defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, and
number 1 relationship killer, contempt
– Contempt also correlates with sickness
• A ratio of about 5
positive things signals
sent to 1 negative
signal sent is the limit to
successful
relationships.
• Ask a couple about how
they got together, see if
there’s a pattern there
about what you know
about their relationship
as a whole.
Microexpressions
• Brief facial expressions that last
less than a quarter of a second.
• Reveal things about us we don’t
want, reveal things that aren’t
even delibrate.
• The best actors sort of can do
these.
• Cops read these in your face.
• Connect to The Human Face, A
BBC show, ~ 11 min. into it.
• There are around 7K
expressions
Face anatomy
• ~ 44 muscles, 1 joint, couple of fused bones, but
muscle aren’t tendoned to the bones, giving
huge mobility.
• Many people can’t read expressions well.
– Makes arguments interesting.
– People with Apsbergers, don’t have the same activity
in their Amygdala as the rest of us when analyzing
expressions. But they can learn it.
– Mobius syndrom, paralyzed facial nerves, no
expressions.
• Study: 2 groups of students. One watches gross
surgeries, another watches nature videos. Both
groups are try to convince their partners that
they’re watching nature videos
• How good are partners at telling liars?
• Avg. Person: 50% chance.
• Psychologists, lawyers, cops, professionals who
are supposed to catch liars, also 50%.
• Secret service agents got 80%, they are trained
to recognize microexpressions.
Smiles and manipulation
• The fake smile is easy
because it only uses 2
muscles.
• Study: Intensity of
smiles in a college
yearbook was a
predictor of overall
quality of life 40 years
later.
• Smiles can increase
sales 30-40%
Try it.
• Can you control your microexpressions?
Furrows in the brow, distress.
• Can you lie about something you feel
strongly about?
• “I did not have sexual
relations with that woman.”
• In Kendo priority is given to
control of facial expression and
analysis of the opponent.
• Watching the pitcher, the
quarterback. You read faces.
• This applies to your everyday
life.
• LOOK PEOPLE IN THE EYE,
AND HOLD IT FOR A MOMENT.
Not in a creepy way. Follow up
and say ‘hello’. It sends a
message of confidence.
• What kinds of things don’t lend themselves
to this “thin-slicing”?
• Can you change your natural and/or
unconscious patterns of behavior?
• If you are aware of what you do that hurts
your relationships, can you, could you,
would you change your behavior?
• Think about your room right now. What
does it say about you? What does your
bookshelf say about you? Your iPod?
Your car’s interior?
• What kinds of things about your
personality are revealed?
• What is not revealed?
Room study
•
Measuring people on 5 variables
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Sociable/retiring, funloving/reserved
Trusting/suspicious, helpful/or not.
Organized/dis, Disciplined/weak willed
Emotional stability
Open to new experience
• Two groups analyze a person on those 5,
• 1 group knows the person well.
• 2nd group doesn’t know the person but
spends a ½ hour in their room
• 2nd group is more accurate on 3 out of 5,
organization, openess to new experience,
and emotional stability.
• What kinds of physical, inexplicable cues
have you or others you know of
experienced that lead to good decision
making?
What’s the dif between doctors who get
sued for malpractice and doctors who don’t?
• If you had to choose between looking at
resumes, creditials, or watching snippets of
conversations between docs and patients.
• Malpractice docs don’t make more medical
mistakes, but they’re blamed for them more.
– They spend about 3 minutes less with patients.
– Don’t orient patients to what’s going on, or put them at
ease.
• Study: People can tell the dif between
sued and not sued doctors by listening to
a sound filtered recording of their voices
that takes out words and only leaves a
garble of pitch, intonation, and rhythm.
• Dane Cook, on “God bless you.”
Why is there “road rage” but no
“pavement rage” for pedestrians?
• Two pedestrians bump. They can quickly
use expressions to resolve it.
• Emails can be waaaay. Misinterpreted.
– So we use smilies.
• KISMET Robot
• Can you build a socially
intelligent machine?
• What signals does it
have to percieve?