these scales for years, they become embedded in the taster’s
unconscious. “We just did Oreos,” said Heylmun, “and we broke
them into ninety attributes of appearance, flavor, and texture.”
She paused, and I could tell that she was re-creating in her mind
what an Oreo feels like. “It turns out there are eleven attributes
that are probably critical.”
Our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and
we can’t look inside that room. But with experience we become
expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret — and
decode — what lies behind our snap judgments and first
impressions. It’s a lot like what people do when they are in
psychoanalysis: they spend years analyzing their unconscious
with the help of a trained therapist until they begin to get a
sense of how their mind works. Heylmun and Civille have done
the same thing — only they haven’t psychoanalyzed their
feelings; they’ve psychoanalyzed their feelings for mayonnaise
and Oreo cookies.
All experts do this, either formally or informally. Gottman
wasn’t happy with his instinctive reactions to couples. So he
videotaped thousands of men and women, broke down every
second of the tapes, and ran the data through a computer — and
now he can sit down next to a couple in a restaurant and