Dave’s Diary:First Impressions Most Often Accurate

We’ve all heard it…perhaps we’ve all said it…”You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”  Truth be told while we may not be able to judge a book by its cover, it seems you can trust your first impressions of people.According to Psychological researcher Jeremy Biesanz, most people can size up a total stranger after only a brief meeting. For his study, Biesanz developed detailed psychological profiles of more than 200 people. In other words he captured the true essence of each of his subjects on paper.

Next he set up three minute, one-on-one meetings among all the people. You can see where this is headed….finally, he asked each person to fill out questionnaires about the others' personalities. The idea of course was to see if the people would reach the same conclusions about each other that he discovered in his extensive profiles.  And they did! As Biesanz puts it  "Many important decisions are made after very brief encounters, including who to hire or who to date. And our first impressions are generally accurate."