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"Thin slicing" is the act of relegating the decision-making process to what journalist Malcolm Gladwell calls the "adaptive unconscious" by focusing on a small set of pertinent key variables, as opposed to consciously considering the situations as wholes over much longer periods of time.

Thin slicing can also be done consciously. The main characteristic of thin slicing is that only a few pertinent key factors are considered in the decision process. Even if more information is available, it is classified as irrelevant and discarded. The success of thin slicing in several situations is described in Gladwell's best-selling 2005 book Blink. The idea of thin slicing challenges the commonly held belief that "more information is better" when making good decisions.