You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover, Sometimes

Human beings have evolved an incredible ability to form first impressions, rapidly and with a high degree of accuracy as a survival mechanism. Admittedly, it is still difficult to know whether to trust first impressions, given there are so many cautionary warnings. We are told how important it is to make a first impression when going on a first date, a job interview or to meet with a new client. We are also warned to never judge a book by its cover, indicating that our first impression could be flawed and suggesting that first impression are formed solely from appearance. Instead, I suggest that human beings are unconsciously skilled at making first impressions by rapidly assimilating information on visual, environmental and behavioral cues and comparing the cues with their own knowledge and experience to create meaning.

The First Impression Exercise provides a brief paragraph describing the behaviors and environment of two Johns, extroverted John and introverted John(Clark, 1998). After reading each paragraph I quickly documented my first impression of the John described in each paragraph. I described extroverted John as happy, energetic, whole, successful, and lucky. I described introverted John as depressed, slow, unhappy, unsuccessful, alcoholic, lonely and unfriendly.

To determine the factors that contributed to my perception, I read each paragraph again and had several observations, foremost among them being that the paragraphs primarily described behaviors. The paragraphs also described the environment and yet did not actually describe John at all. So what did the behaviors suggest about John?

Extroverted John walked on the sunny side of the street suggesting he was happy and energetic. He also took the...

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...red as a whole and they can be very resistant to change. The research leads me to believe that we should trust our intuition while making a conscious effort to challenge our preconceived notions on a regular basis…just in case.

Works Cited

Ambady, Naline, & Rosenthal, Robert. (1993). Half a Minute: Predicting Teacher Evaluations From Thin Slices of Nonverbal Behavior and Physical Attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(3), 431-441.

Clark, Don. (1997, 4/18/2010). Leadership & Human Behavior Retrieved 3/19/2011, 2011, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadhb.html

Clark, Don. (1998, 8/18/2010). First Impressions Retrieved 3/19/2011, 2011, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/impress.html

Smith, Eliot R., & Mackie, Diane M. (2007). Perceiving Individuals. Social Psychology (3rd ed., pp. 57-93). Hove: Psychology Press.