How often has my wife asked what kind of meeting am I attending, to once answered, having the appropriate tie magically appear out of my tie draw. How often did I hear my Mother’s sage advice on clean underwear and hankies? How often have you heard, you only get one chance to impress? The single thought process, of receiving a good impression, whether it’s with the right tie or clean underpants, it can affect everyone, in their working life as well as their social circles. No amount of business books or seminars on the decision process can prepare you for making split second decisions about people you’ve just met and how you’ll feel about them long term. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman has long believed the answer lies in heuristics, the mental shortcuts we all use when meeting people and making decisions, with only the 'known knowns’. The Nobel Prize winning author talks about being hard wired to make quick decisions, think cave man and sabre tooth tiger, and has a phrase ‘what you see is all there is’, when explaining the first impression. Malcolm Gladwell called this rapid cognition, ‘thin slicing’ in his seminal tome ‘Blink’, and also subscribes to the view, first impressions can make or break your career.
So if there doesn’t seem to be much rationality around those first impressions, how can we influence the sub conscious decision making of others? Knowing only a limited amount about a person when you first meet them, we take the easy way out and believe what we see and from there take a long time to change our minds, if at all. From personal experience, I’ve formed opinions after just a few seconds, of people on stage, people out of their comfort zone, shy people, loud people and ego driven people, and haven’t changed that opinion until I got to know them. Unfortunately, if I never got to know them, that initial impression was never altered.
So it sounds like cheating to simply smile when you first meet someone, it feels like hoodwinking when you show outward happiness, with research showing both those perceptions, classified as part of the ‘Expressivity Halo’, lead people to trust and feel they have just met some competent and in control. Throw in a great tie, some well polished shoes, some hankies and it quickly becomes apparent, what’s on the outside counts. Along with the ‘Similarity Attraction Hypothesis’, theorising we feel more at ease with people we have commonalities with, from hobbies to what movies we like, first impressions can be managed if not manipulated.
The new rule of thumb should be, give people more than ten seconds for first impressions, listen closely and see if you can't connect on more levels than the outside veneer. Let's give people extra minutes, giving our brain time to work on a reflexive level rather than an analytical one. Get rid of the first impression blues, give it your best shot and you might be surprised how easy it is to meet new people, make better connections and perhaps change the minds of people, even if you're not wearing the right tie.
