This book is about our ability to make immediate, unconscious decisions based on available information that we can't quite articulate.
It starts with a story about a statue of a boy and whether or not that statue was real. A lot of work and research went into determining this fact and all of the evidence suggested that it was in fact real... Other than a lot of experts that looked at it said something felt wrong about it. I couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. It was later determine what the experts first intuition was correct.
There is a story of a study gamblers with two decks of cards. One day of card was good and one was bad but the difference was subtle. After 50-80 cards on average people were able to articulate which deck was better and why. But after just 20 cards the stress responses in their body were measurably different when drawing cards from the two decks their body had figured it out before they had. It was sending them signals through non-conscious pathways. Eg their hands got clammy.
This is "adaptive unconscious".
Doctor John Gottman Did a study that had married couples come in sit and be recorded while they talked about some thing in their relationship. The scientists analyzed the footage second by second and assigned an emotional state score to both members of the couple. The scientists found that divorce within 15 years could be predicted the 95% accuracy after recording for an hour. After after 15 minutes of footage it could be predicted with a 90% accuracy. His study did consciously what our adaptive unconscious does constantly.
In slicing the first of the brains ability to make patterns and generalizations based on the small set of experiences And data.
Contempt. Stonewalling. Criticism. Aaaand defensiveness. Men are more likely to stonewall. Women more likely to criticize. Both both show contempt equally.
FIST - there is a distinctive pattern that is stable in relationships that you can spot. The German telegraph operators were individually identifiable by the way the tapped their beeps and hoops.
Better by your friends. Better by people who just saw a dorm room.
Introversion vs extroversion
Agreeableness
Contentiousness
Emotion security
Openness to new experiences
Thick slices better in orange. Thin slices better in blue.
Basically, if a doctor tries to dominate the conversation, he's going to get sued in a case where a friendly doctor wouldn't. A study found this they could accurately predict which of two doctors had been sued after removing the content of a doctors speech, leaving the qualities of it, and cutting it down to 40 seconds (20 to each doc). Just the tone of voice did it.