Hmm…

Some things just look right don’t they? They look like they are going to work. Some medicines look powerful. Some people seem plausible, like they are going to be dependable or creative or knowledgeable. Some graphs look really informative, you just know they are telling the truth. Sometimes you come across an argument or line of reasoning that strikes you as logical, truthful, accurate, honest, helpful. This is what psychologists call face validity.

Face validity.

It’s what something has when it looks ‘right’. Face validity is the thing that makes us trust a particular thing, person, piece of paper, concept or whatever. It is probably something that most people don’t acknowledge as being present in their decision-making processes – chiefly because it doesn’t have much to do with supportable logic

An example: Tomorrow morning you walk into a car showroom on the way to the service desk of your car’s brand dealership. You spot a car you really like the look of. Crikey, it’s just so, well, shiny. It smells so new and the doors – ooh, so heavy and clunky. I think I’ll open and shut it again. Clunk! CLUNK! Ooh, “I want it” you think. Then you ask for a brochure. You are given a badly photocopied sheaf of pages, stapled at the top right-hand corner. No, this isn’t a photocopy, you are assured, this is what the marketing department has sent us. This is a £25,000 car you protest. Oh, yes, the salesman retorts, and worth every penny. We’ve decided to put all our effort into the car and not really bother with marketing blurb – we thought the car should speak for itself. Do you take it for a test drive?

‘Thin slicing’.

Face validity, and our tendency to judge things against this subtle criterion taps directly into what the author of Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, refers to as ‘thin slicing’. It is about picking up lots of data subliminally and putting it to good (and bad) use in making complex assessments very fast. Experienced soldiers thin slice all the time in battle. Racing drivers do it a hundred times a lap. Art dealers do it with every major painting they examine; gamblers when sizing up every new opponent. So, the problem with this thin slicing is not that we do it or don’t do it.

A face validity – good or bad?

The problem is that we either don’t know we are doing it or choose not to own up to it. If we are unaware of how we are making a decision then thin slicing and the corresponding face validity ‘rating’ of what we are judging can get the better of us. So, ‘thin slicing’ + self awareness = good quality deciding. As for face validity itself – just remember about books and covers.