First impressions are usually lasting impressions. Within the first thirty seconds, without any conscious effort, an image or opinion is formed influenced by cues perceived by our sensory organs. Though sometimes misleading, first impressions can be an accurate representation of a person, and once formed very difficult to change. Ability to assess at such a rate exhibits the involvement of the senses working together and the complexity each one may contribute. The role of Olfaction is studied (Sorokowska, 2013) in relation to accurately identifying first impression personality traits based solely on body odor.
Natural body odor attributes from secretions of sweat, urine, saliva, and genital excretion. Personality traits such as neuroticism, extraversion, and dominance elicit associations with ones body odor. The olfactory system has the ability to learn quickly. With that being said, repeated emotional experiences may create a scent in response to the under or overproduction of secretions making that emotion or trait detectable to others. For example neuroticism is defined as the tendency to experience anxiety, nervousness, fear and easily upset. Emotions that stimulate and sustain the sweat glands customizing ones own personal neurotic aroma.
Psychophysiological stimulation can affect the apocrine, eccrine, and sebaceous glands altering body odor and the ways others perceive us. The apocrine glands are the source of human pheromones activated by emotions. This explains why there is a higher correlation of correct assessments between adults of the opposite sex due to pheromones not being active before puberty. Association ability originates early in human development and plays a major role in social interactions such as: the i...
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...ig change in odor produced by donors. All fifty-odor donors were adults, children may have better assessed their own peers, although children have weaker body odor. The children being in between the ages of 7 and 9 must factor into a possible limitation. There could have been misunderstandings of the descriptors in the personality assessments given. For example had they described dominance with aggressiveness the children may have been more apt in detecting it. The experimenter reading the questionnaire to the children could have influenced their ratings; much can be said of the actual comprehension of the younger children involved.
Works Cited
Agnieszka, Sorokowska, (2013, September), Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, Volume 37, Issue 3, pp. 153-163, Published online (2013, April 16), Assessing Personality Using Body Odor: Differences Between Children and Adults.
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The first impression you have when meeting someone is their appearance, which makes it easy to judge people based on how they
Introduction: This article, The search for human pheromones: the lost decades and the necessity of returning to first principles, written by Wyatt, Tristram D. explains the possibility and probability of the existence of human pheromones. The author describes the study of human pheromones as a “waste of scientific effort”, considering we not made progress on the study in the past 40 years (Wyatt). The author suggests, “We should restart the search for human pheromones from scratch using the techniques well established for other organisms” (Wyatt). The author gives us perspective on the dilemma, and explains all sides of the debate on the existence and future research of human pheromones.
The limbic system is associated with emotional behavior, long-term memory, and olfaction. Your sense of smell is the first and most primitive sense you use when you are born. It helps newborns to recognize their parents. Our sense of smell is intertwined with our memories formed in our brain.
First impressions are powerful and can be difficult to overcome. Research shows first impressions form within a few moments of an encounter and may take many additional encounters to overcome (Tongue, 2007). Observers use many different criteria, such as personal beliefs, verbal cues, non-verbal cues, and aesthetic cues, to form first impressions. However, content has little to do with the impact of a first impression. Appearance has the most impact on a first impression. In fact, only 7% of an impression comes from the actual content of a message. Another 35% of the impression comes from the delivery of the message; tone, inflection and pitch. This leaves, a very large percentage, approximately 55%, of an impression forming based on visualization, how one appears (Jeavons, 2007). Imagine appearance being the deciding factor rather than knowledge. This is h...
Psychology, (2014). Solomon Asch: Forming Impressions of Personality. [online] Available at: http://www.all-about-psychology.com/solomon-asch.html [Accessed 5 May. 2014].
Taylor, Pepau, & Sears (2000) explain that first impressions are extremely important because they are the initial idea that an individual forms about another individual and determine whether they decide to pursue any type of relationship. People tend to form impressions of each other relatively quickly and use minimal information such as the gender of the o...
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