Soc Psychol Educ (2013) 16:421–434

DOI 10.1007/s11218-013-9223-9

Done in 60 s? Inferring teachers’ subjective well-being

from thin slices of nonverbal behavior

Johanna Pretsch · Barbara Flunger ·

Nina Heckmann · Manfred Schmitt

Received: 29 October 2012 / Accepted: 23 April 2013 / Published online: 7 May 2013
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract Being a teacher is known to be a particularly stressful occupation and as

a consequence many teachers suffer from reduced well-being. Thus, it is important
to know as soon as possible which individuals are likely to experience reduced well-
being in their employment. Therefore, this study investigated whether it is possible to
infer teachers’ future well-being from minimal nonverbal information, i.e., thin slices
of behavior. Between 2003 and 2006, 50 teachers were filmed while holding a lesson.
Naïve observers were shown 60-s clips of these teachers and were asked to predict the
teachers’ satisfaction with job, life, and health in 5–8 years. Five to eight years later,
the teachers’ satisfaction with job, life, and health was assessed. It was shown that
judges highly agree in their predictions. Additionally, these predictions were shown to
be accurate for life and job satisfaction. Thus, it is possible to predict a teacher’s well-
being on the basis of thin slices of the nonverbal behavior they show while performing
their job. These thin slices might therefore allow for a risk assessment in the context of
teacher education and such approaches might contribute to teacher professionalism.

J. Pretsch (B) · N. Heckmann · M. Schmitt

Department 8: Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau, Fortstraße 7,
76829 Landau, Germany
e-mail: pretsch@uni-landau.de
N. Heckmann
e-mail: heckmann@uni-landau.de
M. Schmitt
e-mail: schmittm@uni-landau.de

B. Flunger
Center for Educational Science and Psychology, University of Tuebingen, Europastraße 6,
72072 Tübingen, Germany
e-mail: barbara.flunger@uni-tuebingen.de

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Keywords Teachers · Subjective well-being · Thin slices of nonverbal behavior ·

Prevention

1 Introduction

Teaching is a job that is known to be particularly stressful. Schaarschmidt (2005)

states that so far, no other occupation has been assumed to face comparable challenges
and strains. Not surprisingly, there is much evidence that teachers’ well-being is often
severely reduced, which manifests in high rates of mental disorders and physical health
problems (e.g., Heus and Diekstra 1999; Kovess-Masféty et al. 2006). Therefore,
teachers need special resources in order to cope with high occupational demands
(Pretsch et al. 2012a). As a consequence of these high demands and related mental
and physical health problems, teachers tend to retire early from service (Reinke 2007).
Thus, it is important to accurately predict whether a teacher is likely to experience
reduced subjective well-being during his or her career. Therefore, this study sought to
examine whether a teacher’s nonverbal behavior while holding a lesson might serve as
a basis on which an assessment of a teacher’s future life satisfaction, job satisfaction,
and general health can be made.

1.1 Subjective well-being in teachers

What is subjective well-being and why is it especially important to study teachers’

well-being? Subjective well-being is “a broad category of phenomena that includes
people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life sat-
isfaction” (Diener et al. 1999, p. 277). According to Diener (1984), subjective well-
being includes an affective part, which refers to the presence of positive affect and the
absence of negative affect, and a cognitive part. The affective part is defined as a hedo-
nic evaluation of how well life is going. The cognitive part is an information-based
appraisal of one’s life: people judge the extent to which their current life corresponds
to their expectations and their “ideal” life they are aiming for. That is, it includes
an evaluation of the discrepancy between what is and what should be. In the present
study, we focused on satisfaction with life, job, and health, three of the various com-
ponents of subjective well-being, and three domain satisfactions (Diener et al. 1999).
Life satisfaction can be defined as “a global assessment of one’s quality of life accord-
ing to his chosen criteria” (Shin and Johnson 1978, p. 478). Conceptualized like this,
life satisfaction has been shown to be associated with self-esteem, neuroticism, and
symptoms of psychopathology, implying that people who are satisfied with their lives
are generally well-adjusted (Diener et al. 1985). Job satisfaction is, like other domain
satisfactions, composed of several components: an evaluative judgment about the job,
affective experiences at the work place, and beliefs about the job (Weiss 2002). Job
satisfaction has been found to be related to mental problems such as burnout, depres-
sion, and anxiety (Faragher et al. 2005). The general health perception (i.e., a global
and subjective judgment of one’s health) reflects health as a state of well-being. Impor-
tantly, it does not simply reflect the absence of illness symptoms or diagnoses (Ross
and Mirowsky 1995). This conceptualization of general health perception is related to

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a large number of different outcomes such as reduced mortality (DeSalvo et al. 2005),
lower morbidity (Kaplan 1987), and less absence from work (Spector and Jex 1991)
and has been found to be a meaningful outcome in the study of teachers’ well-being
(Pretsch et al. 2012a).
If subjective well-being is studied, the question of its stability should also be
addressed as changeability is an important condition for any preventive activities or
interventions. Fujita and Diener (2005) state that subjective well-being, even long-
term levels, can be influenced by events and circumstances and that individuals may
change substantially from year to year.
They found an average change of up to 1.5 scale units from 1 year to the next which
can partly be attributed to life events and circumstances. Fujita and Diener (2005)
conclude that there is modest stability in subjective well-being and that some indi-
viduals show significant and substantial change in subjective well-being. This is an
important finding as it points to the notion that it is possible to substantially improve
the individual’s well-being. Concerning possible influences on subjective well-being,
it was found that especially minor events and daily hassles, that is, stressful conditions
of day-to-day living, can predict well-being (Chamberlain and Zika 1990). Therefore,
it is reasonable to assume that the diverse stressors encountered in the teaching profes-
sion (e.g., high workload, large class sizes, conflicting demands, lack of recognition,
poor physical environment, lack of control, high emotional demands, lack of decision-
making power; e.g., Hargreaves 1998; Howard and Johnson 2004; Pithers and Soden
1999; Travers and Cooper 1993) impact well-being in teachers, an assumption that
has been supported by numerous studies (e.g., Heus and Diekstra 1999). Also, there
is evidence that reduced subjective well-being can lead to depression and therefore
constitutes a major risk factor for the development of depressive symptoms (e.g.,
Koivumaa-Honkanen et al. 2004). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that teachers’
reduced well-being can lead to long-term consequences such as depression and related
mental disorders. As subjective well-being can be regarded as a potential mediator
between occupational stress and mental disorders in teachers, it can be an important
starting point for preventive activities. Preventing the individual to fall victim to the
negative aspects of his or her job is crucial for several reasons. First and foremost,
reduced well-being is an undesirable state for the individual that is—as described
above—related to diverse negative outcomes such as symptoms of psychopathology,
depression, anxiety, and morbidity (e.g., Diener et al. 1985; Faragher et al. 2005). Sec-
ond, teacher satisfaction and well-being is known to be related to teacher commitment
and school effectiveness (Shann 1998), thus immediately influencing educational out-
comes in students. Third, reduced well-being in teachers causes large costs for society
as it leads teachers to retire early due to disability for service (Reinke 2007). Given
the notion that subjective well-being can be subject to changes due to external circum-
stances (e.g., job stressors), there is a need to make inferences about a teacher’s future
well-being in order to allow for individualized prevention and early intervention.

1.2 Assessing future subjective well-being

But how could such inferences be made? What might allow us to draw inferences about
a teacher’s subjective well-being? In psychological research, it is well-known that it

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is possible to make inferences about peoples’ personality from brief observations of

their nonverbal behavior, so-called thin slices of behavior (e.g., Ambady and Rosenthal
1992). On the basis of such limited information, we infer a person’s extraversion, con-
scientiousness, employability, competence, ambition, trustworthiness, confidence, and
professionalism (e.g., Borkenau and Liebler 1993; Hecht and LaFrance 1995; Prick-
ett et al. 2000). What are these thin slices, and why is it possible to form accurate
impressions based on such limited information? A thin slice of behavior is defined as
an extract of dynamic behavioral information that is <5 min long (e.g., Ambady et al.
2006; Ambady and Rosenthal 1992). In order to qualify as a thin slice of behavior, it is
important that judges have the opportunity to observe expressive behavior (e.g., facial
expression, tone of voice, gestures, body movements). Such thin-slice judgments have
been shown to be surprisingly accurate and have already been successfully used to
judge teachers’ personality (Pretsch et al. 2012b). But how can we form an accurate
impression primarily on the basis of the nonverbal behavior a person shows while
interacting with others or performing his or her job? When we compare communi-
cation channels, we find that the nonverbal channels (i.e., the face, the voice, body
movements, gestures) have some unique features as compared to the verbal channel
(DePaulo 1992). The first feature concerns the controllability of the channels. Verbal
channels are easier to control (i.e., a person might find it relatively easy to control what
he or she is saying). This is not the case for the nonverbal channels, which are much
more difficult to control. Thus, information regarding a person’s true emotional states,
intentions, or personality characteristics could “leak through” and provide additional
and unique information that is not available through the verbal channel. This phe-
nomenon has been widely described as nonverbal leakage (e.g., Ekman and Friesen
1969). The second feature that distinguishes the nonverbal from the verbal channels is
the accessibility to observers. Obviously, a person’s nonverbal behavior is more easily
accessible to observers than to the person him or herself. We are mostly unaware of
how our faces look or how our voices sound to other people. Obviously, this limited
accessibility is related to the ability to control these channels: if we are not aware of
what we convey with our face, body, or voice, then it is almost impossible to instan-
taneously regulate our expressive behavior. Additionally, we usually do not get much
feedback with regard to our expressive behavior, whereas we do for our verbal behav-
ior. Thus, in most individuals, regulating one’s nonverbal behavior might not be highly
trained. Taken together, thin-slice judgments and first impressions are mainly based
on nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions, gestures, voice) that can reveal aspects of
emotions, personality, and behavioral intentions (Ambady et al. 2000). Due to the non-
verbal channel’s low controllability, judgments based on nonverbal information can
substantially add to or even be more accurate than judgments based on only verbal,
biographical, or contextual information.
If it is possible to make accurate inferences about a person’s emotions, personality
or behavioral intentions, then it could also be possible that a teacher’s subjective
well-being can be accurately inferred from these thin slices of his or her nonverbal
behavior.
For our study, it would be particularly important to know whether a teacher’s future
well-being can be accurately predicted after one brief glance as we are interested in
assessing a teacher’s risk to suffer from the negative aspects of his or her job.

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1.3 Is it possible to infer a teacher’s subjective well-being from a brief glance

at his or her nonverbal behavior?

To our knowledge, only one study thus far has examined whether people are able to
make inferences about a person’s well-being from thin slices of behavior: Hall et al.
(1981) showed that naïve observers are able to accurately infer patient satisfaction
with their doctors on the basis of thin slices of their nonverbal behavior. Findings from
existing research also suggest that nonverbal cues such as head nods and smiles are used
to infer a person’s health and well-being (Friedman et al. 1985). Similar findings were
reported for an occupational context: smiling and gesturing were found to be positively
related to liking one’s job as judged by external observers (Washburn and Hakel 1973).
However, this finding can only be seen as a first hint that inferring subjective well-
being from thin slices is possible and research is needed that examines whether accurate
judgments of teachers’ well-being can be derived from their nonverbal behavior they
show while performing their job. Still, as described above, it is reasonable to assume
that a brief glance at a teacher’s nonverbal behavior might allow us to judge his or
her future well-being: important and valid information on such attributes could indeed
“leak through nonverbally” and then be used for the judgments.

1.4 Aim of the study

As outlined above, this study sought to examine whether it is possible to predict a

teacher’s future subjective well-being from brief observations of his or her nonverbal
behavior acknowledging the notion that teachers are at risk to suffer from reduced well-
being at some point in their careers and that an attempt should be made to assess their
risk to suffer from reduced well-being at an early stage. Potential indicators could be a
lack of positive affectivity or signs of tension seen in a tense body posture or nervous
gestures. This would be a promising approach allowing for preventive activities that
could be integrated into teacher education (e.g., individual counseling including stress
management, personality development, and self-reflection processes). We assumed
that naïve observers viewing teachers holding a lesson are able to consistently and
accurately predict these teachers’ subjective well-being after a follow-up interval of
5–8 years. Additionally, we examined which nonverbal cues observers use to make
their judgments. The teachers participating in our study were filmed in their daily work
environment, therefore guaranteeing a high level of ecological validity and resembling
situations such as teaching visitations in which teachers are observed by supervisors
or principals and in which such approaches could be implemented once their validity
has been shown.

2 Methods

2.1 Participants

Participating teachers Fifty primary and secondary school teachers who had previ-
ously participated in video studies on student achievement (e.g., Helmke et al. 2008)

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participated in our study. Between 2003 and 2006, video recordings of each teacher
holding a lesson were taken. In 2011, the teachers were contacted via mail (the address
of their school was used) and asked to fill out a questionnaire designed to assess differ-
ent aspects of subjective well-being. Of the 80 teachers contacted like this, 50 teachers
responded and mailed back the completed questionnaire (response rate: 62.5 %). As
the teachers were contacted via their school, only those teachers could participate who
were still employed at the same school. The dropout is therefore most likely due to
change to another school, retirement, or job change. As the schools were not allowed to
give information about the whereabouts of the teachers, the possibility of a systematic
dropout, that is, teachers with very low well-being were not in service anymore and
did not participate, cannot be ruled out. However, this potential systematic dropout is
not of big concern for our study. As our study is about the observability of subjective
well-being, it is not necessary that the whole range of well-being is covered. How-
ever, an underestimation of observability cannot be excluded as very low well-being
is probably easier to observe.
At the time of the follow-up, their mean age was 51.8 years (S D = 9.77 years;
age range: 36–67) and they had an average of 20.9 years of professional experience
(S D = 9.28). Thirty-six (72 %) of the teachers were female.
Judge participants Naïve observers were 15 undergraduate psychology students
recruited on the campus of a German university. Their mean age was 23.27 (S D =
7.66; age range: 19–44 years), and 11 (73.3 %) of them were female. Judge participants
received extra class credit or were paid 5 e/h.

2.2 Measures

As measures of subjective well-being, we focused on satisfaction with life, job, and

health, three of the various components of subjective well-being, and three domain
satisfactions (Diener et al. 1999).
Life satisfaction To assess the life satisfaction of the teachers, the German version of
the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al. 1985; Glaesmer et al. 2011) was
used. This scale measures global life satisfaction with five items (e.g., I am satisfied
with my life) which are answered using a scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree)
to 7 (completely agree). In the present teacher sample, Cronbach’s alpha for this scale
was .90.
Job satisfaction Job satisfaction of the teachers was measured using a scale espe-
cially designed to assess teachers’ job satisfaction (Merz 1979). The 12 items (e.g.,
I think that being a teacher is an especially satisfying job; sometimes I regret that I
have become a teacher) are answered on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (completely
disagree) to 4 (completely agree). Cronbach’s alpha in this sample was .91.
General health perception The general health perception was assessed according
to the widely used item of the SF-36 Medical Outcomes Health Survey (Ware and
Sherbourne 1992). Teachers indicated their general health status on a 5-point Likert
scale ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Such general and global judgments of
individual health can provide valid and reliable measures of general well-being (Davies
and Ware 1981).

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2.3 Materials

Video clips of the teachers For each of the 50 teachers a 60-s clip of a videotaped lesson
was available; the clip was randomly chosen from the whole lesson. We chose 60-s clips
because Carney et al. (2007) showed that 60 s potentially provide enough information
for accurate personality judgments of unacquainted people. Thus, we assumed that
60 s might also provide enough information for judgments of subjective well-being.
These 50 clips were randomly split into three sets with each set containing 16 or
17 teachers, respectively. These three sets of teachers were later presented to the naïve
observers in three separate judgment sessions.
Observer ratings of life and job satisfaction and general health perception For the
judgment of the teachers’ future life and job satisfaction and general health perception,
observers were provided with rating scales derived from the self-report measures
described in the section above. Items were rephrased (e.g., the teacher will be satisfied
with his or her life) and were answered on the same rating scales as the self-report.

2.4 Procedure

The whole judgment task was split into three separate sessions. All three sessions took
place within 1 week. The first session started with a short statement about the purpose
of the study and the estimated length of each session. Afterwards, participants gave
informed consent and signed a nondisclosure agreement on not giving any information
about the teachers to a third person and were given time to become familiar with the
judgment dimensions. Before they started the judgment task, participants were clearly
and precisely told: “You should judge how satisfied and healthy these teachers will be
in 5–8 years.” These instructions were repeated before every single judgment as well
as at the beginning of each session.
After these instructions, observers watched the first set of video clips and judged the
teacher immediately after the end of the clip. After the first session, judges returned to
the lab for the second and the third sessions. At the end of the third session, participants
were thanked and debriefed and received payment or extra course credit.

2.5 Control variables

In order to ensure that the observer ratings of teachers’ future well-being are not
confounded with their well-being at the time when the video was taken, we con-
ducted a baseline assessment of teachers’ well-being. Therefore, 15 judges (Mage =
24.82, S Dage = 6.12; 12 females) were shown the 50 videos of the teachers and were
asked to judge how satisfied and healthy the teachers are at the time when the video
was taken. The judges used the same rating scales as were used for the assessment of
future well-being. Only the items were rephrased (e.g., “the teacher is satisfied with
his or her life” instead of “the teacher will be satisfied with his or her life”) and the
instruction was changed to asking participants to judge how satisfied and healthy the
teachers were at the time of the video. These 15 ratings were then averaged across
judges and used as a control variable when evaluating the accuracy of the judgments
of future well-being.

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2.6 Nonverbal cues

Two coders coded the 50 videos of the teachers with regard to the following nonverbal
cues: number of smiles, number of head nods, number of head shakes, and number
of object-focused gestures (see Friedman et al. 1985). We additionally included cues
drawn from body posture as we assumed that body posture would be of additional
value especially with regard to teachers because they spend most of their time standing
in front of their classes. Two body-posture-focused cues were considered and rated
on a 5-point scale: bent—upright and tense—relaxed. Each coder coded these six
nonverbal cues in six separate rounds. The ratings were reasonably reliable with an
average correlation of .60. In order to use these ratings for further analysis, the two
ratings were averaged across coders.

2.7 Analyses

Two measures were used to evaluate whether naïve observers are able to infer teachers’
future well-being on thin-slice basis. First, the agreement between observers concern-
ing the measures of well-being was assessed using intraclass correlations (consensus).
This measure reflects the degree to which observers agree on the future well-being of
the teachers. Second, agreement between the teachers’ self-reports of well-being at
the time of the follow-up and observer ratings of these constructs was calculated using
trait-by-trait self-other agreement correlations (accuracy). For each teacher, the life
and job satisfaction and general health perception ratings were averaged across judges
and correlated with the self-reported scores. In such analyses, the unit of analysis is the
observed target, i.e., the teacher. Trait-by-trait self-other agreement correlations allow
us to draw conclusions about how accurate an attribute of a person can be judged, i.e.,
the observability and judgeability of an attribute can be assessed. This is crucial for
our study as we wanted to know how accurately aspects of a teacher’s future subjective
well-being can be judged. To take into account the extent to which future well-being
is influenced by baseline well-being, we also calculated correlations between judges’
ratings of future well-being and self-reported scores for which baseline ratings of
well-being were partialled out.
In order to examine which nonverbal cues were used by the observers to make their
judgments, the aggregated observer ratings of subjective well-being were correlated
with the ratings of the six nonverbal cues. Significant correlations between the observer
ratings of well-being and ratings of a nonverbal cue would indicate that this nonverbal
cue was used to infer teachers’ subjective well-being.

3 Results

Descriptive statistics Table 1 shows means and standard deviations for the teachers’
self-reported life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and general health perception as well
as means and standard deviations for the aggregated observer ratings of these three
aspects of subjective well-being. As obvious, the means of the self-reported scores
do not differ strongly from the means of the aggregated observer ratings indicating

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Table 1 Means and standard deviations for self-ratings and observer ratings of teachers’ subjective well-
being

Self-rating Observer rating

M (SD) M (SD)

Life satisfactiona 5.33 (1.12) 4.70 (.78)

Job satisfactionb 2.98 (.63) 2.85 (.47)
General health perceptionc 3.79 (.68) 3.57 (.57)
a Values ranging from 1 to 7, with higher values indicating higher life satisfaction
b Values ranging from 1 to 4, with higher values indicating higher job satisfaction
c Values ranging from 1 to 5, with higher values indicating better subjective health

Table 2 Correlations between observer ratings of subjective well-being and ratings of teachers’ nonverbal
cues

Nonverbal cues Life satisfaction Job satisfaction GHP

Smiles .33* .46** .35*

Head nods .14 −.15 −.04
Head shakes −.37** −.29* −.22
Object-focused gestures .14 −.02 .09
Body (bent—upright) .03 .04 .14
Body (tense—relaxed) .36* .50** .43**
GHP general health perception
* p < .05 two-tailed; ** p < .01 two-tailed

that naïve observers on average assigned similar scores to the teachers as the teachers
assigned to themselves.
Consensus and accuracy Consensus for the three measures life and job satisfaction
and general health perception was high (.87, .89, and .87, all ps < .001, one-tailed).
Accuracy was lower, but still remarkable for life satisfaction and job satisfaction
(r = .20 for life satisfaction, p = .08, one-tailed; r = .27 for job satisfaction,
p = .02, one-tailed). For general health perception, accuracy was low (r = .07,
p = .31, one-tailed).
Controlling for baseline well-being In order to assess the extent to which the ratings
of future well-being refer to the baseline well-being of the teachers, we controlled for
this baseline by partialling it out when calculating accuracy correlations. When the
baseline measure was controlled for, accuracy was .18 for life satisfaction ( p = .10,
one-tailed), .21 for job satisfaction ( p = .07, one-tailed), and .13 for general health
perception ( p = .18, one-tailed).
Table 2 shows which nonverbal cues were used by the observers to draw inferences
on the future subjective well-being of the teachers. Correlations are presented for each
of the three aspects of subjective well-being. We found several significant correlations:
number of smiles as well as relaxedness of the body was positively correlated with all
of the three ratings of well-being indicating that the more the teachers smiled and the
more relaxed their body posture was, the more satisfied and well they were considered.
Negative correlations were found between number of headshakes and ratings of life
and job satisfaction indicating that more headshakes indicated a lower level of life and
job satisfaction.

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4 Discussion

The aim of the present study was to examine whether naïve observers are able to infer
teachers’ future subjective well-being from thin slices of their nonverbal behavior
they show while holding a lesson. First, we found that naïve observers largely agree
on their predictions of all three aspects of well-being which is indicated by the high
consensus found for all three measures. Second, the predictions of teachers’ life and
job satisfaction corresponded to some degree to the teachers’ self-reported life and job
satisfaction 5–8 years later indicating the validity of brief observations of the teachers’
nonverbal behavior for the prediction of their well-being. Importantly, we could show
that observer ratings of future well-being are not strongly confounded with present
well-being.
What does this high consensus mean? First and foremost, it tells us that naïve
observers highly agree on their spontaneous predictions of whether and to which
degree a teacher will experience well-being in his or her employment. Also, judges
consistently use specific nonverbal cues (number of smiles and head shakes, a relaxed
body posture) to make their predictions about a teacher’s future well-being. When
we compare the consensus found in this study with the one found for judgments of
other psychological constructs that are judged on a thin-slice basis (e.g., personality
traits; Borkenau and Liebler 1993), then this points to the notion that teachers’ future
well-being is a construct that is particularly consistently judged.
That is, teachers’ well-being can also be understood from the perspective of the
social perceiver (e.g., students, parents, colleagues, and principals) because it is highly
consistently perceived by the social environment. Such a highly consistent perception
of teachers’ well-being is striking as the possibility of reciprocation effects becomes
obvious. How can we imagine these reciprocation effects to be shaped? In the study
by Hall et al. (1981), patient satisfaction judged on the basis of thin slices of behavior
was positively correlated with the physician’s sympathy, which was also judged on a
thin-slice basis. That is, the more the patients were perceived as satisfied, the more the
physicians were perceived as sympathetic and the other way around. In other words:
when someone is perceived as satisfied in an interpersonal setting, he or she will
perceive others as sympathetic. Likewise, Hall et al. (1981) found that perceived patient
satisfaction was associated with the physician’s negative affect: the more satisfied a
patient was perceived, the less the physician was perceived as anxious and angry.
Similar effects were found in a study by Washburn and Hakel (1973): in a simulated
job interview, an interviewer’s liking of his job as perceived by external observers was
positively related to the applicant’s performance, implying a systematic responding
to the perceived attributes of the interviewer. Transferring Hall et al.’s (1981) and
Washburn and Hakel’s (1973) findings to a classroom setting in which the teacher
is highly consistently perceived as satisfied with his life, his job, and his health, this
could—among other variables—influence the students’ affectivity, motivation, and
performance as perceived by the teacher, which could, then, influence the teacher’s
well-being. This phenomenon could be described as complementary reciprocation, a
way of systematically responding to each other, especially through nonverbal cues
such as smiling, body movements, and body posture. Thus, it is plausible to assume
that in an interpersonal setting such as the classroom perceptions of each other and

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systematically responding to these perceptions are important and should be considered

from an empirical and practical point of view. Also, it might be beneficial to raise
teachers’ awareness for the impressions they nonverbally convey to others.
Besides high consensus, substantial agreement between the judges’ predictions
and the teachers’ self-reports emerged for life and job satisfaction, that is, observers’
predictions were to some degree accurate and naïve observers were indeed able to
make accurate inferences about different aspects of a teacher’s future well-being.
By controlling for a baseline rating of teachers’ well-being, we could show that the
observers’ ratings were based on inferences about a future state and not only the
well-being of the teachers at the time when the videos were taken.
When we compare the magnitude of the two accuracy correlations found for life and
job satisfaction to those self-stranger correlations usually found for personality traits
(e.g., .21 for extraversion, .24 for conscientiousness, and .10 for emotional stability;
Borkenau and Liebler 1993), it becomes obvious that it is surprisingly high. What do
these results mean? Consistent with the findings of a previous study, attributes related
to satisfaction can be accurately judged (Hall et al. 1981). However, whereas Hall et al.
(1981) only examined patient satisfaction with their doctors, this study extends existing
knowledge as it shows that also life and job satisfaction can be accurately judged.
This is especially important as life and job satisfaction constitute important aspects
of subjective well-being (Diener et al. 1999) and are known to have positive effects
on successful adjustment (Diener et al. 1985) and negative effects on mental health
(Faragher et al. 2005). Given the notion that subjective well-being can show substantial
changes over time (Fujita and Diener 2005) and that daily stressors play a crucial
role in reducing well-being (Chamberlain and Zika 1990), being able to judge these
attributes accurately brings about great benefits for the study of teachers’ well-being.
Note particularly that making such judgments on the basis of thin slices of behavior
is an intuitive process that naïve observers are able to perform or even perform more
or less automatically (e.g., Ambady et al. 2000). Thus, school principles, supervisors,
and colleagues should be able to form a spontaneous impression on a teacher’s future
well-being in order to give a teacher feedback on how he or she is perceived by others
regarding his or her well-being or risk of suffering from reduced well-being. Of course,
such feedback must be given in a protected and trusting framework as must be the
case for any measure contributing to and initiating self-reflection processes.

5 Conclusion

Taken together, this is the first study to show that teachers’ future well-being can be
predicted on the basis of very thin slices of nonverbal behavior, that is, judges can
tell how satisfied a teacher will be in some years when they are briefly exposed to
the nonverbal behavior the teachers show while performing their job. For the teaching
profession, a profession that is known to be particularly stressful, such spontaneous
predictions of future well-being may help to identify those individuals who are at risk
to fall victim to the negative aspects of their job. Given the various consequences of
teachers’ reduced well-being for the individual teacher, for educational outcomes in
students as well as for society, the importance of such an early risk assessment cannot

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be overestimated, especially as the results of this study suggest that persons at risk can
be identified by spontaneous judgments of their future well-being that can be made
while observing them performing their job.
Since persons being at risk of suffering from reduced well-being can be identified
rather validly by their nonverbal behavior, it might proof helpful to pay closer attention
to these nonverbal indicators and the impressions teachers convey to others. We think
that detecting reduced well-being in teachers should become part of the daily routine
in schools in order to be able to take action at a point in time when prevention is still
possible.

Acknowledgments We thank Jane Zagorski for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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Author Biographies

Johanna Pretsch is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Differential Psychology and Psycho-
logical Assessment of the University of Koblenz-Landau. Her main research interests are person percep-
tion and the accuracy of first impressions, individual differences in education, and teacher personality.
Barbara Flunger is a research assistant at the Center of Educational Science and Psychology of the Uni-
versity of Tuebingen. Her research interests are directed to the consequences of teachers‘ attitudes and
behaviors towards students in the classroom, including teachers‘ job satisfaction and work-related stress.
Nina Heckmann is a Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of “Learning and Teaching Processes” of the
University of Koblenz-Landau. She is interested in psychological assessment and the accuracy of first
impressions.
Manfred Schmitt is Professor of Differential Psychology and Psychological Assessment at the University
of Koblenz-Landau. He is interested in social justice, emotion, social responsibility and prosocial behav-
ior.

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