Reading “thin slices”
I am often asked how long it takes a customer to fix on their impression of a sales person.
I used to answer, “4 minutes.”
This reply was based on research on the time it took job interviewers to make up their mind on the suitability of a job applicant.
However, I now answer “10 seconds.”
In their remarkable studies, social psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, have shown that we often form positive or negative impressions of people in a mere “blink” or “think slice” of time.
After subjects watched three two-second video clips of professors teaching, their teaching ratings predicted the actual end-of-the-term rating by the professors own students.
To get a feel on someones energy and warmth, the researchers concluded just six seconds is usually enough.
Popularity: 10% [?]
