Are First Impressions Accurate?
In the movie Jerry Maguire, actor Renee Zellweger says to Tom Cruise, “You had me at hello,” implying that it was love at first sight.
The phenomenon of speed dating is based on the assumption that you can decide who would be a good date within a matter of minutes.
Many executives and HR professionals claim they can choose the best candidate for a job in a matter of a few minutes in an interview.
Do you form a judgment about what people are like in the first few minutes of meeting them? Do you trust that judgment is accurate? Have you found later than your initial judgment was inaccurate?
All of these questions are illustrative of the issue of first impressions. Are they accurate?
First impressions are important, and surprisingly accurate, and yet can also contain a healthy dose both of bias, discrimination and misperception.
The History of First Impressions
First impressions are part of our human interactions for thousands of years. Philosophers and scientists have long discussed the idea that the face is a window into our internal traits and character. Explanations for this phenomenon include the attractiveness stereotype, self-fulfilling prophecies, or “good genes” hypotheses from evolutionary psychology, but there have been mixed findings regarding the accuracy of such judgments. The idea that internal traits can be displayed externally dates back at least to Aristotle, who states, “It is possible to infer character from features”.
In the late 1700’s, Johann Kaspar Lavater, a Swiss pastor, published a series of essays on this ideal — known as physiognomy — which gained a great following into the 19thcentury. He believed and argued that the shape of the nose, the set of the jaw, the width of the forehead — all were key to understanding whether a person would be well-suited to a particular occupation because those physical traits were directly linked to intelligence, or kindness, or perseverance.
Physiognomy and Lavater’s theory fell out of favor in the late 19thCentury due to its association with Phrenology — the notion that one’s personality could be found by reading the bumps on his or her skull, which represented certain areas of the brain being larger or smaller. Later, with the advent of brain physiological research and phrenology was discredited, and physiognomy along with it.
What Does Modern Research Say?
So what does more recent research say that could help us assess whether first impressions are valid and reliable?
According to a study led by Jeremy Biesanz of the University of British Columbia, in Social Psychological and Personality Science. there are two ways to be right about people’s personality. We can know how people are different from each other, but a good judge of persons knows that people are mostly alike — for example, almost everyone would prefer being friendly to being quarrelsome. The more people rated their partner’s personality in a way typical of most everyone, the more accurate they felt their perception was.
Researchers N. Ambady and R. Rosenthal published a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which they argue that non-verbal physical behaviors influence our perceptions and judgments about a person.
A study by Gul Gunaydin, Emre Selchuk and Vivian Zayas, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, concluded first impressions lasted for months after the first encounter.
A study by Jennifer K. South Palomares and Andrew W. Young, published in Social Psychological and Personality Sciencereveals just how quickly we form these first impressions. They reported based on their experiments: “Facial impressions are relevant given that these occur very brie[y (in as little as 33 milliseconds) and they are consequential, for instance, predicting government election results and influencing romantic preferences.” Their findings are particularly relevant in reference to dating apps like Tinder that rely on first impressions. “We examined people’s first impressions of faces on three traits fundamental in the partner preference literature: trustworthiness, status, and attractiveness,” Palomares said. “An essential next step involves asking participants to evaluate faces based on their romantic partner preferences, so we can see which are the traits that are prioritized in participants’ facial romantic preferences.”
Princeton University researchers Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov published a study in Psychological Science in which they gave one group of university students 100 milliseconds to rate the attractiveness, competence, likeability, aggressiveness, and trustworthiness of actors’ faces. Members of another group were able to take as long as they wanted. Their judgments were the same for most of the traits as the participants who had only a tenth of a second.
Researchers Nick Rule and Nalini Ambady found in their research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that “It only takes a 50ms glimpse (that’s one twentieth of a second) of a man’s face for people to recognise his sexual orientation.”
A study by Loyola Marymount University professor Nora A. Murphy published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that looking your conversation partner in the eye was huge for your perceived smartness. “Looking while speaking was a key behavior,” Murphy wrote. “It significantly correlated with IQ, was successfully manipulated by impression-managing targets, and contributed to higher perceived intelligence ratings.”
A 2017 University of Toronto study by Konstantin O. Tskhay, Rebecca Zhu and Nicholas O. Rule published in Leadership Quarterly found that observers decide in as little as five seconds whether a person is charismatic, while watching a silent recording of that person delivering a speech.
A 2011 Dutch study by Rob. M.A. Nelissen and Marjin H.C. Jeijers published in Evolution and Human Behavior, found that people wearing name-brand clothes — Lacoste and Tommy Hilfiger, to be precise — were viewed as being of higher status than people who did not wear designer clothes.
In a study by Neil Howlett and colleagues published in the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, participants rated men in tailored versus as being more successful and attractive than men wearing off the rack suits. “On the evidence of this study it appears men may be advised to purchase clothing that is well‐tailored, as it can positively enhance the image they communicate to others,” the authors wrote.
In a study by C.T. Kwantes and colleagues, published in the journal Psychology of Men & Masculinity, the researchers concluded “ Results indicated that the male wearing non-traditional attire was expected to earn a lower starting salary and experience more verbal harassment compared to the traditionally attired male independent of occupation type,” and “ The traditionally attired male, on the other hand, was thought to have a greater likelihood of being hired into a traditionally male occupation and a greater likelihood of being promoted regardless of occupation type than the non-traditionally attired male.”
A study by Karel Kleisner and colleagues published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found “eye color had a significant effect on perceived dominance in males: brown-eyed men were rated as more dominant than men with blue eyes”.
Research by Mariella Pazzaglia published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, concluded our sense of smellhelps us decide if someone is a friend or foe. According Pazzglia’s research, we determine if someone is in our family or social group by scent. If someone smells familiar, it’s an indication that they are like us and could help us. But if they smell too different, we may think they might not have our best interests in mind.
Aiden P. Gregg and colleagues published research in the journal Attitudes and Social Cognition which shows it is difficult to fully “undo” a false first impression. Experiments using implicit measures — those that assess spontaneous, unintentional reactions to stimuli, rather than asking research participants to express an opinion of those stimuli — have often found that photographs of people continue to elicit implicit reactions consistent with an initial impression, even after participants no longer explicitly believe it.
Bastian Jaeger and colleagues published a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, which examined whether first impressions also have an impact on who is found guilty in court. They reported: “We showed research participants case files and asked them to carefully consider the evidence and then reach a verdict. They could rule in favor of the plaintiff or the defendant, depending on who presented the more convincing evidence. Crucially, we showed participants different mug shots of defendants in order to test whether participants would be influenced by their first impressions. To create these mug shots, we used photographs of White men, changing their facial features with computer software. We created one version of each photo in which the person looked particularly untrustworthy and one version in which he looked particularly trustworthy. Our results clearly showed that facial appearance mattered. Across three studies, we found that defendants whose faces looked untrustworthy were found guilty more often than defendants who looked trustworthy.”
Psychologist Leslie Zebrowitz of Brandeis University and her colleagues published a study on first impressions from faces in Current Directions in Psychological Science. In her study she asked participants to rate faces in photos on personality traits such as dominance or warmth. Participants judged people with the “right” kind of face are judged as more likable, knowledgeable, and capable. However, those with the “wrong” kind of face are deemed unapproachable, incompetent, and untrustworthy.
According to a study by Genevieve L. Lorenzo and colleagues, published in Psychological Science “Beautiful people are seen more positively than others.” The researchers go on to say “the ‘beautiful is good’ effect is a very present phenomenon when dealing with first impressions of others.”
People use voices to instantly judge people, researchers say. ”From the first word you hear a person speak, you start to form this impression of the person’s personality, says Phil McAleer, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, who led the study, which is published in the journal PLOS ONE. In his experiment, McAleer recorded 64 people, men and women, from Glasgow, reading a paragraph that included the word “hello.” He then extracted all the hellos and got 320 participants to listen to the different voices and rate them on 10 different personality traits, such as trustworthiness, aggressiveness, confidence, dominance and warmth. What he found was that the participants largely agreed on which voice matched which personality trait.
Contrary Views
Research has found that “first impressions are surprisingly valid,” says Daniel Kahneman, psychologist, Nobel laureate and author of Thinking,Fast And Slow. “You can predict very quickly whether you like a person and if others will.” However, first impressions are not perfect, and making a quick decision about someone can have consequences. “If your first impression is a mistake, it can take a while to realize this, as your expectations tend to be self-fulfilling,” says Kahneman. “When you expect a certain reaction you are likely to perceive it even if it isn’t there.”
In his new book, Face Value, Princeton University’s Alexander Todorov examines all the research on first impressions. He concludes that judging others based on a single glance irresistible, but the judgments we reach are usually wrong. “Across several domains — predicting sexual and political orientation, cheating, and aggressive behaviors — we find little evidence that our impressions are accurate,” reports Todorov.
But why do we rely so much on first impressions? Because, Todorov explains, “We immediately form impressions from appearance, we agree on these impressions, and we act on them.”
That’s why CEOs who are deemed to look more competent get hired. And it’s why political candidates who “look” more competent win elections. The problem is that even though a person may look competent it can be superficial and a projected personna. It turns out that the appearance of competence predicts higher CEO pay, not superior corporate performance. And we know all too well that political leaders who give the impression of competence (and dominance) can end up being the worst leaders.
Todorov added our misguided first impressions are becoming more important in the digital world, where employers choose candidates based on their LinkedIn profiles and singles pick potential dates by swiping through photos on Tinder. “Ideally, you’d post different images on LinkedIn than you would on Facebook,’ he says. “Different images of the same person can generate completely different impressions. The person can look attractive and competent in one image and silly and not very smart in another.”
Summary:
So there is compelling research evidence to show that most people automatically judge people by first impressions, which may be hard-wired into our brains as a way of determining if the person is a threat. Second, most research experiments point to the relative accuracy of those instant judgments, although not 100%, and they are subject to cognitive biases. Also, the accuracy is affected by how much time we have to confirm our first quick judgment. Certainly, it is prudent for us to validate our first impressions by looking for more information that can confirm our initial judgment.
