Shifting table dynamics and thin-slicing

This is something I rarely ever see mentioned here. I read so many times about players making assessments about the table they are at or about the players they are up against and then making decisions on that basis.

But what never seems to be factored into this equation is that at the same time that you are making these assessments, the other players at the table are doing likewise - at least some of them are.

How can a player account for these shifting dynamics? What is the best approach to considering that just as you might have made a decision that now is a good time to adjust your game to the table, someone else is doing exactly the same thing - which makes your previous assessment incorrect.

I see a certain scenario repeated here - where someone makes an assessment about a certain player, plays a hand according to that assessment, only to find that the player was not playing according to that assessment. Was the assessment wrong? Or did the player realize something and alter his play?

The challenge here is that it is common knowledge that once we make an initial impression about another person (or thing, for that matter), that impression tends to be very difficult to alter.

I have just finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell - which is about thin-slicing and how our brains can make accurate decisions (or inaccurate, if we have flawed information) in a short time with limited analysis. Applying this to poker, I have noticed that the vast majority of my decisions do not require detailed analysis - I am able to just "feel" that a certain action is appropriate - that feeling is thin-slicing in action.

In this context, attempting to overly analyse a specific player's specific action can wind up being disasterous - especially if you are not taking into account that he is likely analysing his play as he goes as well.

This is much more of an issue in live games, where you mind is not only interpreting the poker action, but also all the subtleties of the player's body language - which may be impossible to dissect, but which your brain is very good at analysing on a subconscious level.