Predictive Validity of Thin Slices of Verbal and Nonverbal Behaviors: Comparison of Slice Lengths and Rating Methodologi
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Predictive Validity of Thin Slices of Verbal and Nonverbal Behaviors: Comparison of Slice Lengths and Rating Methodologies Michael Z. Wang1 · Katrina Chen1 · Judith A. Hall1 Accepted: 24 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Thin slices, or excerpts of behavior, are commonly used by researchers to represent behaviors in their full stimulus. The present study asked how slices of different lengths and locations, as well as different measurement methodologies, influence correlations between the measured behavior and different variables (predictive validity). We collected self-rated, perceiver-rated, and objectively measured data on 60 participants who participated in a 5-min interaction with a confederate on video. These videos were split into five 1-min slices and rated for verbal and nonverbal behaviors via global impressions, using the same rater for all five slices and also using a different rater for each slice. For single slices, results indicated no clear pattern for optimal slice locations. In general, single slices had weaker predictive validity than the total. Slices of 2 or 3 min were, in general, equal to 5-min total in predictive validity. The magnitude of correlations was similar when same versus different coders were used, and the predictive validity correlations of the two methods covaried strongly across behavior-outcome variable combinations. Keywords Thin slices · Nonverbal and verbal behavior · Predictive validity · Global impressions
Introduction Researchers have long known that social behaviors reliably correlate with various personality traits, abilities, and life outcomes (Ambady and Rosenthal 1992, 1993; Harker and Keltner 2001; Godfrey et al. 1986). For example, if an individual frequently smiles, laughs, or jokes around others, there is a good chance he or she is also extraverted, socially skilled, and has a great social life (Keltner and Bonanno 1997; Ruch and Deckers 1993; Yip and
* Michael Z. Wang [email protected] * Judith A. Hall [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, 125 NI, Boston, MA 02115, USA
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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
Martin 2006). But how much of a behavior needs to be observed before it reliably correlates with a person’s attributes? Often, researchers use thin slices for behavioral measurement. A thin slice is an excerpt of behavior that is shorter than the total duration of the behavior the researcher has at hand, whether it consists of video, audio, or transcribed text (Ambady et al. 2000). Depending on the corpus at hand and the author’s research purposes, a thin slice could vary substantially in duration—for example, 50 ms was used by Rule and Ambady (2008) while 10 min was used by Hirschmann et al. (2018). Thin slices have a long history in behavioral research (e.g., Scherer 1972), and have mainly been used for pragmatic reasons like alleviating the labor required of coders or raters. For example, Levine and Feldman (1997) chose 15-s sli
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