On the mind.

My newsletter will be offline for two weeks, so I won’t be writing my next one until June. Many, many years ago, I told my little sister that when she graduated college, I’d take her anywhere in the world. So we’re off to Europe for the next couple weeks! Just the two of us and It’s important to me to focus on us being together. No work, no newsletter.

Now back to The Weekly…

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Your gut feeling and intuition will always speak louder than words. So when something tells you something isn’t right, listen to that feeling. For example, when you're interviewing someone for a new role and something tells you early on that they’re not a good fit.

I recently heard about a popular study called the Thin Slicing Study that I thought was fascinating and wanted to share it with all of you.

The Thin Slices Study

In the study, psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal asked participants to watch silent video clips of teachers, just 2, 5, or 10 seconds long. The participants were then asked to rate the teachers on traits like warmth, confidence, and effectiveness.

Despite the ultra-short exposure and no sound, their ratings closely matched the evaluations given by students who had spent an entire semester with those teachers. Let me re-phrase that for you because I want it to sink in: a random stranger, within seconds, judged a teacher almost exactly the same as students who took their class for the entire semester. The study revealed that people can form surprisingly accurate first impressions based solely on brief, nonverbal cues like facial expressions, posture, and gestures.

This is known as thin slicing. The skill of making quick, accurate judgments with limited information.

Key Takeaways

• Snap judgments were incredibly accurate even with just 2 seconds of footage.

• Only nonverbal cues, like body language and expressions, were used.

• Consistent across age groups, from high school to college.

The study’s implications are broad, impacting how we should think about hiring, interviews, teaching, leadership, and even just our daily interactions. Where just a few seconds can shape lasting impressions.

I think many people believe their lies go unnoticed, but there’s something in us, something human, that picks up on truth at an unconscious level. To many of us live on the surface and don’t tap into the deeper potential of human connection. As time goes on and I get older, I believe more and more that there’s a deeper connection happening between us all, just beneath the surface.

Just remember: people, even unknowingly, can read you better than you think.

Weekly moments.

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Thanks for following along!

The Weekly is a newsletter that goes out each week written by Greg Bellinger, currently building and CEO of White Rabbit Group and The Labs.

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