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The power of first impressions

We size each other up instantly, based on everything from clothing colour to first name to face shape. These first impressions have an enduring social impact, says Anna Brooks.

There is no doubt the human animal is an inherently social one. Success in our work and social lives heavily depends on how effectively we interact with others — how smoothly we conduct ourselves within the social sphere.

We unconsciously tap into pre-formed 'expectancies' of human behaviour and impose them onto incoming sensory data in order to help us quickly understand the nuances of the ever-changing social situations in which we operate.

The speed at which we size up new acquaintances is one of the most impressive aspects of human social capabilities.

In his 2005 book Blink: The power of thinking without thinking, Malcolm Gladwell uses the term 'thin slicing' to describe the almost instantaneous process that occurs when we're introduced to someone new. Within seconds we not only judge this new acquaintance, but are ourselves judged in return.

Relatively basic characteristics — like gender, age, race and physical attractiveness — are not the only classifications we make. Lasting impressions are also formed of personality traits like how dominant, trustworthy and competent we are. Such a process, Gladwell argues, is an adaptive response to a world of unprecedented richness with respect to social information.

The range of human behaviours over which impression forming exerts influence is vast — hiring, firing, dating and voting behaviours all are susceptible.

Within that context, science may be able to teach us some significant lessons. To what extent could an awareness of the mechanics of impression formation help us mediate its impact? Can knowledge help us retrospectively override our 'thin slice' tendencies?

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What has science taught us so far?

Psychologists have traditionally led the charge in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of impression formation.

Researchers like Alexander Todorov of Princeton University have produced data in the lab that have confirmed that social judgments of traits such as trustworthiness and dominance are based on mere glimpses of facial features.

And these judgments are made with relative consistency. Within that context, the 1772 assertion of Johann Lavater — a Swiss poet and physiognomist (a practitioner who judges an individual's personality via their external appearance) — that "whether they are or are not sensible of it, all men are daily influenced by physiognomy" appears remarkably prescient.

More contentiously, some ingenious work by the University of St Andrews' David Perrett suggests the possibility that such associations between appearance and personality are actually informative — our instantaneous judgment of a person's personality is often correct.

So whilst physiognomy in its original form has been roundly debunked as a pseudo-science akin to phrenology, there is now credible evidence that on some measures facial features are indeed an informative 'tell'.

Perrett argues the mechanism for this may be a form of self-fulfilling prophecy — facial features associated with trustworthiness, for example, may contribute to the individual being treated as honest, which may in turn shape his or her behaviour towards that particular trait.

Taking a broader view, faces are just one piece of the impression formation puzzle.

We actually exploit an impressively disparate array of information sources to inform our social judgments. Body odour, speech patterns and clothing colour (red T-shirts make a sporting team opponent more dominant) are just some of the features that appear to play a role.

The phonetic properties of given names may also influence first impressions. In an extension of the fascinating field of nominative determinism (where one's given name has been shown to correlate with behavioural outcomes) — those with the initial 'F', for example, are more likely to score Fs in academic exams.

Researchers investigating the mechanisms of impression formation have only just begun to scratch the surface. Much work remains outstanding in the process of identifying exactly how it is that we 'size one another up'.

What is already clear, however, is that despite its multifactorial nature, the process of impression formation takes place quickly and with relative consistency across observers, yet has a mostly unconscious and enduring social impact.

Given the importance of the processes involved for human societies that are inevitably underpinned by social cooperation, it's a potentially rich area for future scientific endeavour.

About the author: Dr Anna Brooks, is a cognitive psychologist with the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group at Southern Cross University.



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