Divorce, and he attempted to give me a sense of his argument,
scribbling equations and impromptu graphs on a paper napkin
until my head began to swim.
Gottman may seem to be an odd example in a book about
the thoughts and decisions that bubble up from our unconscious.
There’s nothing instinctive about his approach. He’s not making
snap judgments. He’s sitting down with his computer and
painstakingly analyzing videotapes, second by second. His work
is a classic example of conscious and deliberate thinking. But
Gottman, it turns out, can teach us a great deal about a critical
part of rapid cognition known as thin-slicing. “Thin-slicing”
refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in
situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of
experience. When Evelyn Harrison looked at the kouros and
blurted out, “I’m sorry to hear that,” she was thin-slicing; so
were the Iowa gamblers when they had a stress reaction to the
red decks after just ten cards.
Thin-slicing is part of what makes the unconscious so
dazzling. But it’s also what we find most problematic about
rapid cognition. How is it possible to gather the necessary
information for a sophisticated judgment in such a short time?
The answer is that when our unconscious engages in thin-slicing,