Thin-slicing is making quick decisions with limited information. It can be helpful, but also lead to mistakes. Dr. Phil’s show is an example of thin-slicing in therapy. Emotional reactions to partial data can also be a form of thin-slicing. It can be helpful in communication and decision-making, but important information must not be overlooked.
The term thin-slicing means making very quick decisions with small amounts of information. The term is most often used in discussion of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 non-fiction book Blink, which explores the concept of “thinking without thinking.”
Gladwell posits that slicing thin may have its uses or may be a mistake. If a small amount of information is taken to generalize or make decisions in full, then decisions may be made that are actually wrong. However, sometimes a small amount of relevant information is enough to make decisions and take action.
An example of a thin cut is the Dr. Phil TV show. When the program started, people praised Dr. Phil’s ability to cut through the “bull” and bring people straight to their core issues. However, many therapists believe that some of Dr. Phil’s thin cut is detrimental to therapy in general. They argue that therapy takes more than an hour of appearing on a TV show to really help people change destructive behavior.
To his credit, Dr. Phil tends to research his guests quite thoroughly, and what the audience sees is a thin slice of the total information the therapist has at their disposal. Also, more and more Dr. Phil may confront his way to the truth, but then works with families or individuals to get them regular therapy after a show.
In one sense, thin-slicing could also refer to a person’s emotional reaction to partial amounts of data. For example, a person finds out that his child is late from school. Without waiting for an explanation, the brain immediately switches to the emotion of anger. The parent generalizes from past experiences and decides that the child is to blame, before evidence is presented in this particular case.
In one sense, the thin cut can be helpful and is somewhat representative of the idea of cutting straight through the Gordian Knot instead of carefully untying it. For example, young children may be particularly verbose in their explanations of why something happened. Parents can help them by actively listening and reducing excess information. “Ah I see, John kicked you, which really pissed you off. That’s why you threw the rubber.” This helps the child learn to organize thoughts more carefully and become a better communicator.
Also, you can look at some representative samples and use thin-slicing to extrapolate and make good decisions. For example, a pharmaceutical company runs a huge amount of tests which show that 50% of people who take an experimental drug have extremely adverse reactions to it. You don’t have to read all the data to make a decision about drug approval. Instead the FDA can use thin slicing to say, “Half the people reacted badly to this drug. It’s dangerous and therefore we shouldn’t approve of it.”
However, the danger of thin-slicing is that important or relevant information is overlooked. If half of the people who took the experimental drug actually recovered from a fatal disease, this data must be considered. The decision to approve the drug in this case should not be the result of a thin cut, but a careful analysis of all relevant data.
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