Don’t Be Deceived by First Impressions
Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.
Around this time every year, I dispense a lot of advice to my graduate students, most of whom are on the job market. I get questions such as “How do I find a job that perfectly matches my strengths?” (A: You won’t, so stop worrying about it.) Or “Should I take a job and live in a different city than my spouse?” (A: No.) And very typically, “How do I make a good impression in an interview?” (A: Read on.)
I find that some young people are extremely anxious about this last one, especially if they are naturally introverted and know it. They worry that their shyness makes them seem standoffish or uninterested; in an interview, of course, those traits can be deadly, so they are concerned that their introverted personality will hamstring their efforts.
Undeniably, first impressions are extremely powerful—in work, romance, friendship, and almost every other part of life. People make judgments based on information they process in a split second, below the level of consciousness. That does not mean, however, that anyone is doomed by a naturally serious demeanor, a taciturn disposition, or plain old nervousness. On the contrary, a little understanding of the science of first impressions can help anyone improve the ways they affect the brains of people they meet, and better understand others as well.
Over millions of years, our biological ancestors evolved the ability to form first impressions in a fraction of a second. Neuroscientists have determined that people can by sight decide consistently in as little as 39 milliseconds whether someone is a threat or not. In other words, about three times faster than you can blink, your optical and limbic systems decide if another person might cause you harm. For humans to develop this ability through natural selection is logical; almost nothing rewards survival more than effective threat perception.
Close behind in speed, at 100 milliseconds, comes a consistent estimation of trustworthiness. Once again, this makes sense: You might not kill me outright, but I should still figure out if you’re trying to take advantage of me before I interact with you. (This rapid processing also involves, for example, how your brain decides whether to make direct eye contact with that person staring at you on the subway.) This aspect of threat perception reveals a significant difference between the sexes; when surveying a face that people generally judge to look trustworthy, women rate other women, in particular, as significantly more trustworthy than men do.
Honing our accuracy of perception for other traits such as competence, likability, aggressiveness, and attractiveness takes us longer, because we need more time to be confident in our judgments; quite commonly, our rapid initial judgments may be inconsistent with what we later decide. But when given enough time to consider observed behavior, some judgments, such as assessing a person’s competence, tend to update more slowly—especially when compared with how long we need in order to judge such traits as benevolence and integrity.
In sum, at an initial encounter between two people—which could be a job interview or a date—each person’s brain assesses the other person by answering at least three questions: Are you a threat? Can you be trusted? Are you competent? Within seconds, before either of you is even conscious of the fact, you might be ruled out as an employee or as a potential mate. No pressure!
You might be thinking that judgments made this quickly are open to a lot of error. After all, evolution should favor speed over accuracy, and tend to reward a negative snap judgment because it errs on the side of caution. The potential cost of incorrectly seeing someone as a threat is low, but the price of mistaking them as not a threat could be enormous.
Given this bias, it’s no surprise that first perceptions tend to be inaccurate. Researchers in 2010 asked participants in an experiment to view photos of strangers, and based on initial impressions, to judge aspects of their personality. The researchers found that their subjects claimed confidence in their judgments 70 to 80 percent of the time, but their actual accuracy was either modest or statistically nonexistent.
People may arrive at erroneous judgments about you for many different reasons. For example, if you’re nervous when first meeting, your facial expression and demeanor might not fairly represent your true character, intent, and competence. Tension might make you frown when you’re actually excited, or you might fumble your words when talking about a topic you know cold. This can elicit what is known as a fundamental attribution error, which occurs when an interlocutor attributes to your personality behavior that is conditioned more by the circumstances.
So much for how first impressions are formed, but what about how to control the impression you make? To come off well in an interview, the first objective is to project an expression and manner that is nonthreatening, trustworthy, and competent. Fortunately, a handy way to do just this is simply to look happy. Neuroscientists have shown that facial expressions interpreted as fear or anger will stimulate an observer’s amygdala, which arouses their alarm and suspicion. Scholars have likewise demonstrated in experiments that people with expressions seen as happy are judged to be more trustworthy and competent than those seen as disgusted.
So smile. By this advice, I do not mean that you should grin like Jack Nicholson in The Shining—that will light up your interviewer’s amygdala like a Christmas tree. The goal is to model what researchers call the Duchenne smile, which is associated with actual happiness. Not only does smiling like this denote a positive mood to others, but it also, scholars have shown, can reduce stress in you.
If this demeanor doesn’t come naturally, here’s a trick: Before your interview, spend a few seconds in the restroom with a pencil gripped horizontally between your molars. This will flex the muscles around your eyes, where happiness is actually perceived when you smile (rather than by the shape of your mouth).
This is not a global solution to a successful first impression, however. Research shows that although a relaxed smile is great for interviewing, it does not necessarily work for dating. Scholars writing in the journal Emotion in 2011 found that although straight men judge a happy expression as the most sexually attractive way for a woman to look, women say that it is one of the least attractive looks for a man. At a first meeting, then, men need to be sure whether they’re after a job or on a date.
There’s one more piece of advice I like to give my students. They may be interviewing for a job now, but before too long, they will be interviewing other people for a job. I recommend that they not trust their gut too much. Instead, I advise them to recall that first impressions evolved to be fast, not accurate. That’s great in an environment where strangers might pose a threat of violence or exploitation. But in a modern job interview, that inaccuracy simply means you’re likely to rule out a lot of great potential recruits.
In general, when first meeting someone, interrogate the signals you’re getting from your brain about the interviewee. You can still pay attention to what your gut says; you just don’t have to take it at its word. If something feels off, specifically ask yourself whether this person might be nervous or shy. Giving that extra consideration is the right thing to do—and you might discover a star whose reserved manner made others overlook their talent.