Is The First Impression That Important?

It sure has happened to you sometime. They introduce you to a person and soon, without really knowing why, you end up making an assessment about them. You don’t need a minute to get that first impression. His appearance, his gestures, manners, his voice … small details that make up an image that you end up cataloging in one way or another.

It may come as a surprise to you, but studies tell us that, in general, people are quite good at those brief analyzes that outline first impressions. Be that as it may, we usually have very little time not only to analyze others, but to make a good impression on ourselves.

Why do we form an impression so quickly?

Psychologists tell us that sometimes we do it not in 30 seconds, but in thousandths of a second. In just one breath we know if a person is to our liking or not, if he inspires confidence or not. Why is this happening? It is an aspect that has to do with the evolution of our species. An adaptive resource that is very easy to understand.

If we judge the person before us as threatening and dangerous, our first reaction will be to run away. People need to make instantaneous evaluations to make decisions at the moment. In a way, these seemingly quick analyzes have a lot to do with our personality, with our fears and also with our needs. It is true that we have that instinctive – and almost irrational – part that tells us instantly if something is harmless or threatening, but our own experience also weighs heavily.

A neat and well-dressed person may seem aseptic and superficial, you may prefer a somewhat more informal image because it brings you closer and reminds you of other of your friends … all of them traits that have a lot to do with our personality, and our particular style. We could say that our brain is programmed to reach a quick conclusion with very little information.

How does the first impression work?

Hundreds, thousands of stimuli come to us every day. We do not have time to process all of them or to shred all that information to the millimeter. So how do we arrive at certain decisions? Unconsciously. That is the reality, most of our decisions are made quickly and unconsciously, there where our memories, our sensations, our experiences, our personality are stored …

The brain organizes information into categories, and from there it makes quick comparisons. Very fast and always with the help of emotions. Does this person look like someone from our past who hurt us? Is that tone of voice pleasant to you? Is your smile as sincere as our father’s, or is it as fake as our neighbor’s?

Researchers Sunnafrank and Ramírez (2004) carried out a very interesting investigation regarding the first impression. According to these authors, a large number of young people determined at first sight what would be the level of quality of the relationship with another person, this puts on the table that the first impression is an instrument of regulation in future interpersonal relationships. As a result of this first impression, each person decides the effort they invest in advancing in the relationship with other people.

Beware of the halo effect

The halo effect is a very common cognitive bias. It has to do with the influence of our perceptions, in judging the qualities of a person from our first impression. This term was coined by the psychologist Edward L. Thorndike in 1920, realizing that people tend to draw global conclusions from groups or ethnic groups of people, without knowing them individually.

A clear example of the halo effect would be, for example, meeting a person who is physically attractive to us. Seeing your pleasant image we tend to think that your actions, opinions and beliefs will be just as positive as your physical appearance. And this is something to take into account, since as a result of extending a physical attribute to internal qualities, we make the mistake of creating false expectations of other people and we can fall, for example, into toxic relationships.

Sometimes people make mistakes. The first impression has a direct effect, we cannot deny it, but it does not have to be decisive. We never know what is behind an image, and there may be no better adventure than discovering what is behind an appearance.