First Impressions

June 28, 2005 8:46 PM

Why, from a psychological perspective (evolutionary or otherwise) are first impressions of other people so strong and lasting?

Why do we so find it hard to revise our opinion of people's fundamental character based on later information. If we meet someone who we think looks attractive, for example, we will continue to think of them as "that attractive person who let themselves go" later on. This is the phenomenon people scratch their head about when they say "I wonder what he/she first saw in that person."

Likewise, if we first meet them because they are kind to us but later we discover that they are, say, a criminal, we will continue to think of them as someone with a "good heart who went bad." Why is it so hard to see people as others first see them, as, for example "that criminal who must have deluded others into thinking he has a heart"

I've noticed that on the Internet too, I associate people with the first photo I see of them and I find it extremely difficult to revise that, even if I am later shown tons of other photos which clearly show that that first photo was an exception and looks nothing like them at all?

Why does our brain stubbornly "attach" itself in this way?

posted by vacapinta to Human Relations (14 answers total)

I guess you're asking a couple of questions.

The reason others may not see someone in the same way we do is perspective - the sum of all experiences in each life to that point that gives rise to the differences in prejudices and likes and specific points that make stronger impressions - and this judgment attitude changes for all of us on a day to day basis, according to mood, tiredness etc.

And when we meet someone our senses form or imprint a pattern of reaction - their speech, dress, mannerisms, gait, physical characteristics and I suppose that gets ferretted away in our brains as our general first impression. It sticks maybe because we invest a lot of sensorial expertise into the assessment. There's a lot of neurones firing and information stored that remains unless we actually forget about it. So I think the first impression is lasting/telling because although it might seem a trifle at the time, we actually devote a lot of energy to the process. Everything after that is adjusting the stored data. Is my 2c.
posted by peacay at 8:59 PM on June 28, 2005

Not to mention that for much of our species' evolutionary history first impressions could be *last* impressions if they were mistaken. Gotta create some selection pressure for a module of cognition or general intelligence to form (not unlike language) that processes the friend or foe judgment in a flash (or the "mate or not" judgment).
posted by realcountrymusic at 9:29 PM on June 28, 2005

Some folks who take an evolutionary-psych bent spend a lot of time postulating that people have evolved mental algorithms that allow them to function more efficiently, socially speaking. Outperform and outreproduce. Like realcountrymusic said... in that model the stereotyping behavior persists so strongly because the stakes of being wrong in a high-risk situation (not recognizing that large aggressive and erratically-behaving people are probably threatening?) are so, well, high. And the stakes of having decided some meek fellow was a jerk when he's actually cool are not so high. I mean, you don't lose much except maybe the chance to make another friend. Or meet the love of your life. I don't know. So there's not a lot of pressure to lose that model and there's a pretty long history of pressure to make snap judgments.

Then there's the cognitive psych 'prototype and exemplar' perspective whereby the first pieces of data you get are salient and significant and the later accretion of data has farther to go to revise an impression than the first data points had to go to make the impression in the first place. I'm expressing this badly, but that's what I recall off the top of my head.
posted by rebirtha at 9:34 PM on June 28, 2005

What realcountrymusic and rebirtha say is true, but add to that the insidious effects of cognitive dissonance. Once an opinion is formed, we are loathe to change it, about people or things. We know that this has an impact, because if we actually state our first impression to another person, or otherwise publicly indicate it, that opinion becomes even further hardened.
posted by dreamsign at 11:13 PM on June 28, 2005

saying what people have said above in a different way - maybe the idea of "how people are" is relatively new (it assumes a certain level of abstract thought - that they are separate individuals, with persistent identities, that you can assess over time). there must have been some more instinctive response that predated that. from an evolutionary pov, the whole conscious thing is pretty new, i guess.

so it's your lizard brain....
posted by andrew cooke at 11:24 PM on June 28, 2005

Because we hate to be wrong.

And we especially hated it back in the days when wrong most often than not meant "dead."

We humans evolve so slowly now. We haven't evolved a world quite deadly enough to make us realize that what we need to do is quit doing what we're doing. Pushing it, in my opinion, but apparently we're not quite there. Kinda sad, that.

Maybe it's difficult because it's a kind of meta-evolution. We gotta learn to look beyond individual need, and start considering group need.

Individually, enough of us have figured out how to make ourselves safe enough to survive long enough, that there is no evolutionary pressure. We're on easy street. It's no longer a real problem. We're past it.

The next step is to make sure that safety is shared. We're still a good long way from that. Sigh.

Which is to say, I guess we need to learn to say "We were wrong." To own our mistakes.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:58 PM on June 28, 2005

In general, old information impedes access to new information.
posted by grouse at 12:26 AM on June 29, 2005

Not that I've read it, but you might be interested in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. I think it's about this exact topic, as is this essay from his archive.
posted by yerfatma at 4:59 AM on June 29, 2005

With the caveat that Gladwell's grasp of the basic science is pretty slippery, in my opinion.

I like the prototype hypothesis mentioned by rebirtha.

Even more interesting is our common sense intuition that first impressions are, more often than not, roughly correct.
posted by realcountrymusic at 5:27 AM on June 29, 2005

I'll second that Blink recommendation. I've only scanned bits, but it's fascinating. Blink has a part on art forgeries and the people (usually former forgers) who are paid spot them, usually instantly and by a quick "gut feeling" that they often cannot explain. Great stuff, and it also showed up on an NPR story on art forgery.
posted by Shane at 6:38 AM on June 29, 2005

can I just add the perspective that although you ask the question with "we" all the way through, I'm not sure this is necessarily the case for everyone. I have definitely had first impressions that I later revised - and I don't think I'm unusual - people often say they're "disillusioned" about someone, for instance. That implies that their first impression was wrong, doesn't it?
posted by mdn at 8:30 AM on June 29, 2005

Like most pack animals that live in communities, humans are extremely aware of who is in the group and who is not a member of the group. The ability to 1) display differences, and 2) pick out differences, were evolutionary adaptations made a long time ago. The ability to even better pick out differences, to seemingly magnify extremely small differences into what look like huge differences, was a further evolutionary adaption. **Start a MeFi thread asking for different stereotypes based on race and you'll see just how well humans can turn the smallest thing into a huge difference ** All of these adaptations further the success of the in-group's genes and of course was thus reinforced.

Aware of all that, the reason first impressions are so strong is because, that's all the time you need. Humans (most I guess...) have the ability to determine if a unknown other is a newcomer or a member very quickly. Everything else about the person is just extra information about them, first impressions are everything.
posted by pwb503 at 9:03 AM on June 29, 2005

Response by poster: Yeah, I may be at one end of the spectrum for this. I am extremely sensitive to first impressions. At some level, I think you do get wrapped up in and "buy into" that vision of a person. So, disillusionment, as it strictly implies, is when the veil falls away, when the illusion is broken.

I think I'll do more research on this on my own. There seems to be a correlation between this and widely disparate things like romantic love and religion: An emotional impact and view of the world that we are reluctant to let go of even though there is some niggling, logical part of us that tells us our illusions are full of holes.

Anyways, thanks...
posted by vacapinta at 10:55 AM on June 29, 2005

Could be that a first impression is necessarily a rapid decision about where a new person fits into your social hierarchy and your own personal view of the world; as such, it has to be schematic and cursory. As time passes and your impression of a person fleshes out, it's inevitable that you start to see the rough edges and the things that don't fit into easy categories.

My own experience has taught me that my first impressions are far more based on my own state at the time, on what I would like to/would not like to see in a person, than what that person "is".
posted by io at 12:29 PM on June 29, 2005