Less vs. More

Thin Slicing: taking a single glance, and having that instinctive gut feeling. Gladwell suggests this is how we all operate, baseball players, birdwatchers, or psychologists. Something that all of these have in common, is the ability to quickly make sense of a complicated situation.

“Thin Slicing refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations based on very narrow slices of experience.” (pg. 23) In this chapter Gladwell deals with the idea that distinctive signatures are apparent within situations form the get-go.

I think the expression “less is more” applies to Gladwell’s theory. With a little bit of information (a thin slice), you can pinpoint the significance. With a lot of information (a thick slice), the main idea can be lost. Gladwell uses several examples to support his theory. One example is the analysis of a short conversation between couples to determine whether or not their marriage will survive. A psychologist, John Gottman, was able to sum up a marriage in a matter of minutes with high accuracy. His theory is “If couples aren’t aware of how they sound, how much value can there be in asking them direct questions?” He puts this theory to the test by looking for a signature that naturally arises. This indirect method proves to be more effective than the direct.

Again, Gladwell demonstrates how powerful the adaptive unconscious is and how much we can learn from the unconscious thought process. You cannot take everything in thick slices, you must be more selective.