You may have heard about “thin-slicing,” a psychological term used to describe a person’s ability to perceive patterns.
The term was originally coined by Nalini Ambady. She is the founder of Stanford University’s Interpersonal Perception and Communication Lab, which represents “a growing center of research aimed at understanding the ways in which social factors interplay with perception, cognition, and behavior.”
Malcolm Gladwell popularized the thin-slicing concept in his best-selling book, titled “Blink. The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.” (View on Amazon)
There is more research on thin-slicing and its specific effect on the poker world. The Economist offers a story about Michael Slepian’s (Stanford University) research study.
“A POKER face. It is the expressionless gaze that gives nothing away. To win at poker, the face must be mastered, and master it is what the best players try their best to do. But a study just published in Psychological Science by Michael Slepian of StanfordUniversity and his colleagues suggests that even people with the best poker faces give the game away. They do so, however, not with their heads but with their hands.
Mr Slepian made his discovery when he showed 78 undergraduate volunteers video clips of players placing bets at the 2009 World Series of Poker. (Bets in poker are placed by pushing chips into the middle of the table.) The clips were 1.6 seconds long, on average, and featured different parts of the players’ anatomies. Some showed everything visible from the table up: chest, arms and head. Some showed just the face. And some showed only the arms and hands. Each volunteer watched only one of the three types of video, but was shown several examples.
After each viewing, volunteers were asked to rate the quality of the player’s hand on a seven-point scale. Then, when they had finished watching all the clips, they were asked to rate their own experience with poker on a similar scale.”
Read the entire article on The Economist, or pick up the April 21, 2013 print edition.
BTW – Here is a fun picture of the Ambady Lab personnel hard at work. What does your thin-slicing mind perceive?
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.