First Impressions

 The idea that you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at them is very interesting to me. How can you gather so much from just appearance? Does our appearance say more about ourselves than we know? That is why I decided to research: How accurate are our first impressions?

My opinion on the topic before I started my research was mixed, I couldn't decide if I thought that these impressions could be accurate. It seems like our impressions can be right sometimes, but other times they are completely off. 

To start my research I looked up what the main factors are in making first impressions. I found that we make decisions about people within 7 seconds of meeting them. Our impressions are based mostly off of non-verbal cues. Appearance can quickly outweigh anything that you say. I also saw that bad impressions make a much more lasting impression than good. So if you meet someone new who is really mean, it would take a lot of niceness from them to win back a good reputation.

The reason we make first impressions goes back a long time. When ancient humans met new people, they had to decide very quickly if that new person was safe. Our judging instincts now are from survival instincts back then. 

Online sources conflicted on how accurate our impressions are, so I decided to do some of my own testing. I showed a group of test subjects an image of a person and told them to write down their first impressions of that person. I did this twice with two different images of two different people. 

My results were mixed. On the first image less than 1/3 of the assumptions made were accurate. The test subjects described this person as wild, uneducated and a creeper. In reality this person has two design patents and has designed for Master Lock and General Motors. It seemed like everyone was describing the opposite of what this person was really like.

Image 1

Image 2

 On the second image more than 3/4 of the assumptions were correct. She was described as friendly, outgoing and athletic. That was correct. In this round almost everything that was said about her was true.

After the confusingly inconclusive survey, I went to ask some experts on their opinions. Jeff Erickson and Barb Peterson both do job interviews as part of their jobs (in separate businesses). I interviewed them because first impressions play a big role in their jobs. You might only meet a person briefly before deciding if you are going to hire them or not. This makes the first impression you make really important. Both of them told me that they tried not to rely on their first impressions too much. 

"I believe the more time you spend with a person, the more you will get a complete picture of their thoughts, character, ability, etc. "

~Jeff Erickson

"The method I try to follow is - keep an open mind and learn more about the person. There is a lot of truth to 'looks are only skin deep.' "

~Barb Peterson

So, from what I looked at our first impressions can be very inconsistent. We will probably always make first impressions, it's an instinct, and it happens automatically. Even if we can't stop making these impressions, we can stop relying on them so much. If you give people a chance and get to know them, they could be very different from what you originally thought they would be.