To Signal Is Human

By Alex (Sandy) Pentland

Real-time data mining unmasks the power of imitation, kith and charisma in our face-to-face social networks

Psychology Animal Behavior Social Science

Current Issue

This Article From Issue

May-June 2010

Volume 98, Number 3
Page 203

DOI: 10.1511/2010.84.203

Decades of research in social psychology have captured the surprising ability of people to “read” one another. In contexts as different as evaluating classroom teachers, selecting job applicants or foretelling jury decisions, accurate human judgments can be made on the basis of extremely thin slices of observational data.

Photograph by Yoichi Okamoto, courtesy of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

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