Thin-Slicing Divorce

When a couple's marriage dissolves, members of their social network are often charged with intuiting their psychological states, and, in many cases, these impressions of their well-being dictate the emotional and social support friends provide. Should I visit him more often? Should I call her frequently? Should I recommend therapy? This report evaluates the accuracy with which people perceive the psychological adjustment of recently separated adults using small amounts, or thin slices, of information. Although the thin-slice paradigm has shed light on the way people process information and make judgments about others (Ambady & Skowronski, 2009; Ames & Johar, 2009; Borkenau & Liebler, 1992), only recently have these methods been applied to perceptions of psychological well-being (Fowler, Lilienfeld, & Patrick, 2009; Friedman, Oltmanns, & Turkheimer, 2007; Mehl, 2006). There is a conspicuous lack of thin-slice research addressing perceptions of interpersonal distress, and in everyday life, interpersonal exchanges (and decisions to provide social support) hinge on accurate perceptions of others' psychological states. In this study, we first investigated the degree to which judges accurately perceived recently separated adults' (targets') adjustment, either after hearing 30-s recordings of targets discussing their separation experience or after reading transcriptions of the recordings. We then asked if the perceptions of these listener judges or reader judges predicted changes in targets' adjustment to their separation over 3 months. Finally, we evaluated the role of each communication channel by asking if judges gleaned more information about targets' adjustment from listening to the recordings than from reading the transcripts (cf. Funder, 1995; but see Nisbett, Zukier, & Lemley, 1981, for an alternative prediction).