Yesterday, the field of Social Psychology lost a true pioneer. Nalini Ambady, professor of psychology at Stanford, passed away at the far-too-young age of 54 after a long battle with leukemia. She was the first Indian-American woman to teach psychology at Harvard, Tufts, and Stanford, and she is best known for her groundbreaking work on person perception.

Ambady’s research, which she conducted along with many illustrious colleagues such as Robert Rosenthal, Nicholas Rule, and Jon Freeman, established that we can form accurate impressions of other people very quickly, even by just viewing “thin slices” of their behavior in as little as 6 seconds. Examples of these “thin slices” include the ability for people to quickly and accurately predict college professor evaluations, sexual orientation, sales effectiveness, power, success, a CEO’s company profits, and even political orientation just from looking at pictures of people’s faces or viewing incredibly brief video clips.

Read more: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com