There is a distinction between a snap judgement about a person, and a prejudice held against that person. The former is made in the first moments of meeting; the latter needs to be formed before meeting to be a genuine prejudice. This distinction matters because whereas prejudice is unacceptable, snap judgements seem to be the psychological norm.
Empirical work by a pair of psychologists, Alexander Todorov and Janine Willis, ten years ago at Princeton University established two things: that “first impressions” take about a tenth of a second to form, and that they are hard to efface thereafter. For the person about to have a job interview, this is rather daunting news. But is not just employment prospects that turn on first impressions: social and romantic prospects hinge on them too.
It is well known that people communicate by a variety of non-verbal means, and indeed might give information about themselves which is more accurate than, or at odds with, the information they verbally offer. Subliminal cues are transmitted by body posture, hand gestures, direction of gaze, blinking, size of the pupils, and more; and of course how people dress, and whether they have detectable breath or body odour, also influence reactions.
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The Todorov-Willis work, published in Psychological Science in July 2006, was based on the following experiment: a series of photographs of faces was shown to a group of people individually, who were asked to judge them for five traits: attractiveness, likeability, trustworthiness, competence and aggressiveness. There was no limit to how much time the participants could take to look at the photographs and form their judgements. The pictures were then shown to different groups for a tenth of a second, half a second, or a full second, these participants likewise being asked to rate the faces for the same five characteristics. Judgments formed in a tenth of a second were highly correlated with the judgments made by the individuals who could take as much time as they liked. Giving the participants half a second or a full second made no difference to the degree of correlation.
Interestingly, the most highly correlated judgement related to trustworthiness, followed by attractiveness. The researchers suggested that an ability to make flash judgements about people on the basis of their facial appearance has evolutionary significance as a survival trait.
This work controverts the clichéd view that first impressions are formed within the far longer but still brief period of seven seconds. But even this more generous allotment might seem improbable: is it really judgement and not merely first impressions which is meant here? A sceptic might suggest that both the one-tenth of a second theory and the seven-second theory might be adequate for the former, but could it be that judgement properly so called is a different thing? It often happens that the impression one forms on the basis of what people look like can instantly be transformed when one hears them speak—and even more when one registers what they are saying—and the eye-blink of a first impression leaves out of account those other factors people need to complete a picture of a new acquaintance: age, occupation, family status, social and even political views.
The sceptical view might be reinforced by the fact that anyone who frequently interviews job and student applicants knows that initial opinions more often than not change as an interview proceeds. But there is a response to this. Interviews are conducted because a fit is being sought for a given position, and one can judge that someone is trustworthy and likeable without also thinking that they have that fit: here a different judgement is at issue. The one about trustworthiness and the rest was obviously made earlier; how could it be change that occurred otherwise?
Whether judgements happen in seven seconds or a tenth of a second, it is evident that first impressions are speedily enough arrived at, but this should occasion no surprise. People are quick to recognise objects as belonging to categories—living or inanimate, stationary or moving, and so on—and it might be that this speed of categorisation especially applies to social interactions because of their importance, making us highly sensitive to the appearance of others and how to interpret it. The same applies to recognising others’ moods—it takes very little time to spot happiness or rage, and the ability to do this quickly is doubtless of evolutionary advantage.
The important point to make, however, is that it would be wrong not to stand ready to revise first impressions, whether positive or negative, if subsequent information suggests that we should. To do otherwise would be to turn snap judgment into something worse than prejudice.
