First Impressions/Rapid Assessments

May i be frank
first impressions can be tough
and when i saw you i knew it
if your size weren't enough
your last answer just blew it!
and so my dear
so short and stout
you'll never be in
so were kicking you out!
~Lyrics (The Legend of) Miss Baltimore Crab from the Musical/Motion picture Hairspray

First Impressions can be difficult whether you’re going for a job interview, meeting your significant partner’s family, auditioning for a dance show (Hairspray), or simple meeting a new person.

First impressions are important and can last.

People often make snap judgments when meeting a new person, whether they like it or not. In fact people can make accurate first impressions with just seeing a photograph of a person's face for fractions of a second (Willis, J. & Todorov, A., 2006). 

Along with the fact that people make rapid assessments of other people, it has also been shown that people make these rapid assessments based off of knickknacks in a person’s dormitory or office, books on their shelves, and music that they have on their phones or ipods (Gosling. S., 2008). It has also been shown that fictional characters with “old-generation names like Walter, Dorothy, and Edith were judged to be less popular and intelligent than younger-generation names like Kevin, Michael, and Lisa (Young et al., 1993). Even voice pitch can influence a person's judgment as both men and women who spoke in higher pitched voices were judged to be more feminine (Ko et al., 2006). 

Though we all do this, it can seem rather superficial when we think about what we judge people on right away and how quickly we do it. Despite the superficial aspect of our judgments is the idea of how accurate we can be in our judgment of someone’s face for a fraction of a second or a minute or two in their room.

We can do this because we are not blank slates that just absorb and process all the information about someone we just met, we meet people and experience new things with prior knowledge and experiences that we interpret and integrate information based off of. We are active perceives.

We have schemas; mental frameworks in our head that come from past experiences that we use to filter and process information. Our schemas help us process complicated information, by simplifying and organizing it. 

Example: 

 

One time while visiting my old hometown on the east-coast I saw a girl who was wearing brightly rainbow colored striped stockings, a dark jean skirt, a bright green corset like shirt, purple like red hair, and very distinctive large butterfly fairy wings. Seeing as it wasn’t Halloween, I quickly thought the girl was weird, different, wants to be seen as different, artsy, smart, not ‘popular’, and liked attention.

I have never spoken to this girl or have ever seen her before or again, but I’m pretty certain of what kind of person she is based on my own personal schemas.

If someone were to tell me that she was dressed like that for a specific reason-for an art class or favor for a friend, I might change my opinion of her. But is someone was to tell me that this girl was quiet, shy, and didn’t like attention, I wouldn’t believe them because in my personal schema of a shy and quiet person do not wear an outfit like the one she was wearing.

I’m more than likely never going to this girl again, but in the few minutes that I saw her I made a rapid judgment of her based on her outfit, and more than likely I am accurate on that judgment. 

(Word count 555)

References

Gosling, S. (2008). Snoop: What your stuff says about you. New York: Basic Books.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. F. (2011). Perceiving persons: Observations: The elements of  social perception. Social Psychology, 8, 81-83. 

Ko, S. J., Judd, C. M., & Blair, I. V. (2006). What the voice reveals: Within-and between-category  stereotyping on the basis of voice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 806-819.

Willis, J. & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions: Making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face. Psychological Science, 17, 592-598.

Young, R. K., Kennedy, A. H., Newhouse, A., Browne, P., & Thieseen, D. (1993). The effects of names on perceptions of intelligence, popularity, and competence. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23, 1770-1788.