First Impressions

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1.8. Last week, I took part in an interesting experiment and thought that maybe you’d like to hear about it. I got involved through one of my psychology lectures. She explained that her team was looking at the factors involved in forming first impressions and was looking for volunteers. Well, I was intrigued as that’s the topic of my major assignment this semester, and I had some free time as I just finished an essay.

So, I signed up. The experiment was simple. Basically, we had to sit in front of a computer and watch a slideshow. The slide showed photos of people’s faces accompanied by information about the person. For example, that they’d been convicted of a minor crime or that they frequently did charity work.

We had to study the photos for a couple of minutes and then try to recall them. I found this easy as I’m good at remembering faces. We were then told to come back three days later. I chatted about the experiment with a friend and we both wondered what the next step would be. I figured it would include some kind of memory test.

My friend thought that maybe we’d get to meet the people. So, three days later, back we went and sat at the same computers and we were asked to look at the same faces. I’d been right after all. This time, we were told to take a box each time, stating whether we thought the person looked trustworthy or not. It was actually very challenging and I feel quite stressed as the participants in my group only saw each photo for less than a second.

I was exhausted by the end and not at all confident that I’d given the right answers. Meanwhile, my friend, who had been put in a different group, had also been doing the test. But her experience had differed from mine. Even though the collection of photos was the same, the participants in her group had been given much longer to look at the faces, remember the facts about them and used that information to make decisions. And, of course, we understood, as we talked about it later, that that was the crux of the experiment.

The length of time the different groups of participants had to form their impressions, not actually the impressions themselves. Once the experiment was over, the team explained the background to the test. They described how originally they’d asked an earlier group of volunteers to look at the photos and rate the people as trustworthy or untrustworthy based on their faces and expressions. The team had then added made up personal information to each photo. Sometimes the information coincided with the physical impression described by the original group of volunteers.

For example, a person with a trustworthy face might be described as being an upstanding citizen. But sometimes it didn’t. And a trustworthy face was labeled as having a criminal record. This really surprised me, as I had assumed the personal information was genuine when asked to read it. The team conducting the experiment then explained that the volunteers in my friends group, who had been given longer the second time they viewed the photos, had generally matched the faces to the categories based on the facts they could recall and not the people’s appearance.

Those of us who had only had a split second for a second viewing, judged according to appearances, even if the information we’d managed to remember in that short time contradicted our judgments. I found that pretty worrying, actually. I mean, the experiment seems to confirm that when we see someone for the first time, in that first split second, our minds are already judging them. Not on fact, but on a simple gut reaction. That bothers me, being judged in that way.

Doesn’t it bother you?