First Impressions
Within the first three seconds (not 30!)of a new encounter, you are evaluated… even if it is just a glance. That is as quickly as you take a picture! People appraise your visual and behavioral appearance from head to toe. They observe your demeanor, mannerisms, and body language and even assess your grooming and accessories – watch, handbag, briefcase. Within only three seconds, you make an indelible impression. You may intrigue some and disenchant others.
This first impression process occurs in every new situation. Within the first few seconds, people pass judgment on you – looking for common surface clues. Once the first impression is made, it is virtually irreversible. Interesting huh? Lets think about what we did in class and reflect about it a bit.
In class you met all of the students and spent only 1 to 3 minutes with them. How quickly did you know if you wanted to be in a group with them or not? How did you make this decision? Was it a feeling or a thought? Was it hard for you to go back after you meet everyone and select 5 people out of 22 that you would want to be in a group with? Was this harder than when you had to decided immediately after meeting them? Did your thought process get in the way?
Have you heard of snap decisions and thin slicing? These are speaking about one's adaptive unconscious. These are decisions that we do not ponder over, but may make as quickly as a blink of an eye. I want you to think about how these decisions may be every bit as good as cautionously deliberated decsions. Second, I want you to think of some examples of when you thin slice and make snap decisions. Should we trust those thin slices and snap decisions? How do they affect how we communicate? Support your responses.
Having spent only a short time with each person, I now realize how judgmental humans really are. We all jump to conclusions about people that we have just met or even people that we see walking down the street. It isn't being rude, it's just the way we're wired. Within the first few responses that were exchanged back and forth, I had my mind made up about being involved in group work with that person. From what I noticed, this seemed true for more people than just me. It was definitely an initial feeling about someone which in turn led to a thought about whether I do or don't want to be in a group with them. For me, it was not all that difficult to choose my group because I already had a general outline in my head of my ideal group before I had even met everyone. My thought process did not really get in the way very much because the group I selected was pretty much done instinctively.
ReplyDeleteI think most of the split decisions that we make are often the right ones, even though they may not take as much effort or be executed as well as a planned-out decision. A perfect example is when students are taking tests. You read a question and may not know the answer entirely but, something popped into your head, and the first thing that pops into someones head is more often than not, the right answer. Based on my experiences, when I get a gut instinct, or a quick feeling of unease, i'll trust my subconscious 100%. I think these decisions affect our communication in a positive way because the vibes we get about someone help us assess what is appropriate/inappropriate to say or do in certain situations.
After going through all the interviews I had a difficult time remember which interview related to which person. This is partly due to the fact that I am terrible with remembering faces and names, but mostly due to the fact that I was focusing deeply in each conversation. When it came time to decide for the group I had no idea why I choose to pass certain people and not others. I came to a conclusion after Monica had us all repeat our names that I had subconsciously decided without even thinking about it, and this decision was typically made at the beginning of the discussion. After writing my symbol in the conversation I became too involved to write notes in most cases. I believe that I made the right choice when looking back over the people as the spoke their names because I made another split second decision in deciding which five people I was going to choose out of the 7-10 I gave a passing symbol for.
ReplyDeleteThin slicing and snap decisions are a powerful tool in some cases and crippling one in others. Snap decisions can protect as a biological level to steer us away from potential dangers. Such as whether a ladder looks safe, deciding not to cliff jump into potential rocky waters, or staying out of the neighbors yard with the viscous german shepherd these decision may cause you to take a moment too pause, but your initial decision is made far before you take action. Snap decisions can be harmful on a social level because judging someone before you truly know or understand them can be offensive. Seeing a girl not talking to anyone and relying on your snap decision you can call that girl standoffish or stuck up but if you take the time to talk to her and rely on process and analysis you come to understand that she is just naturally a shy girl. Snap decisions can be harmful in the communication process but beneficial at a biological level.
Tim
ReplyDeleteI liked your ideas about how split second decision are often right and valuable. Even though my arguement is the opposite of your point of view it was interesting to read another viewpoint to help give me a better perspective of mine.
Ryan
ReplyDeleteI like how you referred to snap decisions as a useful tool that can be very assumptious. Our assumptions based on our instincts can be very helpful but it is also something that needs to be built off of. If we always went with our instincts instead of learning more about new people through communication, we could be insulting them by being too defensive all the time.
Knowing that within the first 3 seconds of a new encounter you are evaluated is crazy to think about, as is that first impressions are virtually irreversible. While meeting everyone in class, it didn’t take me very long to figure out if I wanted to be in a group with them or not. I made the decision based off how well we connected and how well we communicated. It was more of a feeling than a thought, and it was very hard for me to go back and pick 5 people to be in a group with. It was so difficult because I felt like I connected with a lot of people, and I didn’t know which of the ones I connected with to choose! My thought process did get in the way after the speed meeting because then I had met more people I liked, and my original plan went right out the window.
ReplyDeleteI have heard of snap decisions before, and I think they are usually the right decisions. Usually your first instinct is the right one and after pondering it you might convince yourself that the right answer is the wrong one. I think you use snap decisions in everyday life in situations like when you decide right off the bat how someone is. Also at stop lights, when it turns yellow you make a snap decision and decide to speed up or slow down. I think we can usually trust these decisions, but I think they hinder our communication. We base these decisions off instinct and not reason and knowledge.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteI also had the problem of forgetting which names went with what face. It also helped me a lot when Monica went over the names again at the end.
It wasn’t an automatic reaction, but after you talked to the person after a few seconds you were able to tell if they were going to be easy to work with. This decision was made basically on how they reacted to you and your responses and if there was common ground between you and them. It was kind of both a feeling and a thought. The feeling was not really explainable, you just kind of could tell. The thought had to do with common ground. Yes, it was very hard to pick only 5 people. There were some people you thought you might work better with, but then there were others that would be fun to work with and only choosing 5 people was a little difficult. Yes, because in my case I thought I could work with more than 5 people and having to choose them was harder than having a discussion with them and getting a feeling on whether or not they would be easy to work with. My thought process definitely got in the way. I was trying to decide if a variety of personalities would be a good group, or maybe all the same interests, and so on. It just makes your head spin when you try to only pick 5 knowing you’re in a group with them for an entire year. I have heard of snap decisions, but not thin slicing. They could be just as good as cautious decision because they come from your gut and a lot of the time your gut is right or really close to right. When in psychology there was a question where I thought I knew the answer, but wasn’t 100% positive, I went with my gut split second decision and had it right. Then there was another question that I thought about for awhile and ended up getting the wrong answer. You also make snap decisions when you drive. What way am I going to go home or the split second of trading lanes. They affect how we communicate because we make a split second decision that doesn’t change. We don’t give a lot of thought to it .We go with our gut feeling and in turn either continue to communicate or stop communicating completely with that person.
ReplyDeleteRyan I agree with the second part of your arguement where you say "These assumptions can be ok as long as you take them only as assumptions and not as a truth about that person." It is important to understand that initial impressions are not always a good indicator of the person. Just as you said getting to know them is key in making a solid judgement.
ReplyDeleteGoing through all the interviews made me realize that you can’t be judgmental and have to give a person a chance to share their thoughts, so you actually get to know who the person is on the inside. During the interviews is when I decided if I could work in a group with a person or if they just weren’t a good fit for me. Making the final decision on my group members took some thinking and it made me think that there are a lot of people that I could work with instead of trying to pick friends and people you already know. I picked my group over feeling because the people I picked gave me a feeling that we could be a good group and gets things done. Selecting five people out of twenty-two took some thinking, but I think I made the correct decisions on who to work with. Deciding to pick your five group members was definitely way harder than deciding after meeting them because there was a lot of people that I could work with and it was hard making the decisions. I don’t think the thought process got in the way because it was just a feeling and that’s what I picked.
ReplyDeleteWhen we make decisions we make them at a snap of a finger, but that doesn’t mean they are bad decisions. I think that making a quick decision makes it easier on a person and leads the person to the right decision most of the time. An example of a split decision is making up your mind if your going to swing at the baseball or not. When the baseball is being pitched you don’t have much time to make up your mind, so the batter has to make a decision very quickly and hope his eyes are great and pick a good pitch. When I’m making a decision it is normally the right decision, but I’m not 100% right all the time. I think split decisions are positive and negative because we are making decisions in the matter of seconds and you can’t always make the right decision.
For me, I got a pretty good sense of whether or not I thought I’d work well with each individual person almost instantly after exchanging names. Most of the time I felt like this intuition was spot on, but a few times, as the conversation continued, my mind changed part way through or towards the end. For me it was more of a feeling than it was a thought and I felt like I was most confident in my decision right after meeting each individual, but because we were so limited on time, I was forced to try and remember at a later time who I had felt the strongest connections with. I found the task of selecting 5 people to be more difficult as time passed. I don’t believe that my thought process got in the way, I just focused on including people in my group who I felt I clicked naturally with.
ReplyDeleteI’m familiar with the concept of snap decisions, but not with thin slicing. I think there is definitely a time for cautiously thought out decisions and a time that split decision are appropriate or even necessary. One example of snap decisions is when you are at the grocery store and you grab things last minute at the cash register or grab something without thinking just because it’s located on an end display.
It was at first a different experience for me but it was a great way to get to know a little about all of my classmates. I am really not someone who knows right from the start if I want to work with anyone by just looking at them but by talking for the 1-3 minutes really helped me figure out what kind of people I want to work in a group. Some of the conversations were akward but some just flowed like had been talking to this person for a while. But the desicion to pick only 5 people was hard because I wish I would have had more time to make the decision because college is all about meeting new people and not just grouping yourself with people you already know or are familiar with. I did eventually choose 5 people but there were many that I had to choose from.
ReplyDeleteSnap decisions and thin slicing have been present throughtout our life span. They take part in everyday experience. Therse decision can be for the good and bad but it all depends on the situation. For example the choice of what to eat when you go to storms, you may want to eat a certain food because you are trying to be healthy but instead you choose something more "unhealthy" this could be good or bad it just depends. Overall thin slice decisions are good except when it comes to a decision that may need time to be evaluated. Everyone knows what they want and they go with their gut feeling. This represents the short term communication connection tat one has with themself to create an ultimate decsion.
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI totally understand how you felt with the decision of choosing who you waant in your group. It was a hard decision knowing that you wanted to meet new people but also be satified with the people you are grouped with.
I knew whether I wanted to be in a group with people relatively quickly. I made my decisions on how outgoing the people were. I seemed to get along with the outgoing ones better. It was also both a feeling and a thought. I felt as though if they were a little outgoing they would be outgoing in the group as well and have more input than a shy person.
ReplyDeleteAfter meeting everyone in class it was difficult to pick only five out of the twenty two. Although it was easier then when I had to decide immediately after meeting them. It was tough judging people off of three minutes, not having an opportunity to actually get to know them. I actually felt some what guilty about it.
Think slicing and snap decisions, they are definitely as good as cautious decisions in some cases. Such decisions can save your life in many situations. For example, when you are driving and you begin to slip on ice, it is a cautious decision to correct yourself. It has happened to me many times and without thinking about it I succeed in correcting myself. If I had time to think about it I think I would do it incorrectly, and more than likely crash. Some examples of which I don't like snap decisions and think slicing is when it comes to judging. I find myself judging people at first glance. :( Personally I think they affect how we communicate in a negative way. Just because people judge one another so much before getting to know them.
Sydney,
ReplyDeleteI like what you said "Some examples of snap decisions are jumping out of the way from a car or when a person in a volleyball game spikes the ball at you either have to get in front of the ball or get out of the way of it! You have like a split second to decide. I have never heard of that term before but after I looked it up I understood more clearly."
I also had never heard of the term and also had to take the time to look it up to understand it a little better but your examples are good as well, specially the one having to do with volleyball. I played volleyball in high school and it is weird how in come cases your first instinct can help you get a point and in other cases it can really mess you up causing you to loose a point for your team.
Good examples!
Chris
ReplyDeleteI like what you said about snap decisions and how they are like your fight or flight instincts. That was a very good way to put it, and I agree that we should trust these instincts.
When we met each person in the class for only a short time, I actually had some difficulty deciding who I wanted to be in a group with. My reason for that is because, like first impressions go, sometimes people make judgments by relying only on sight alone. It goes back to the “don’t judge a book by its cover” deal. Unfortunately those first impressions can’t always be controlled. I can’t control who I judge just by looking at them, it’s habitual for me. However it was only after talking to everyone that I was able to see that most of my own impressions were wrong, and in those times, I enjoy being wrong. Sure, there were a couple conversations where there were some awkward silences, and questions were sometimes out of reach, but that just means that it may take time to be able to work/communicate with that person better. Those awkward moments are just a sign that you don’t really feel totally comfortable with the other person, and that leads to blocked communication. Though, another reason why some conversations may lead to a bad first impression is that every single person has their own life, their mind, and various other walls that they don’t want to let anybody see. That’s understandable. I think it’s unrealistic to think that every person will show you their true feelings and thoughts at a first encounter. People’s defenses go up, and it takes time to actually get to know each person as they are. Sometimes those first impressions are actually correct, even after you get to know a person, and that can be disappointing, but it’s important that an effort was made to see past that first impression. I’m not saying that you should full-heartily ignore your first impressions, but sometimes maybe put it on the sidelines to see if there could be something within that person that you hadn’t seen before.
ReplyDeleteNatalie,
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a shy person myself, sometimes being outgoing is a trait that only comes when I become comfortable enough with a person to be myself. I'm not saying that shy people are all outgoing, some are and some aren't, but it only takes some extra work on the other person's part to just accept the shyness as it is. If the group has some sort of common conversational ground, then the outgoing tendancies may begin to emerge.
When meeting someone for the first time, I am not going to lie I am very judgmental. Like the Blog says at first glance I already have an idea of what I think that person is like. Unfortunately sometimes this prevents me from getting to know some people I am sure I would like if I was more open. Although once I start talking to someone like in a class we have together I can easily transition from my judgmental ways to being very open. Some things that “attract” or make me want to be friends with someone are characteristics such as an outgoing personality, humor ( I LOVE funny people!!), and someone that seems to be them-self. When first being told that we were going to be put into groups I had a clear idea of who I wanted to work with. Once we were done with our speed-meetings my decision was just about the same as it was before. Although there were a handful of people that surprised me when I had the chance to get to know them better. When it comes to getting along and working with people I think anyone can virtually work with anyone, but when choosing our groups we look for people with common interests and personalities because it would be more fun to work with them and ideas would blend better. When choosing the five people for my group I did it based on my first instincts and how the speed-meeting went. For me it was more of a feeling then a thought. As far as whether it was hard or not...I thought it was pretty easy.
ReplyDeleteAs far as snap decisions and thin slicing go I agree with most everyone that has already posted that they are for the most part always right. An example that I thought of is say a girl is at a party, a guy walks up to her and starts talking and trying to get to know her a little better. Right away that girl is going to know if this is a guy that she can trust or if he is one that she should stay away from. That is a decision that is made right away in the conversation and I think it is a gut feeling, or a snap decision. Like some have already listed snap decisions occur while driving, testing, and in sports. Every example of a snap-decision that I can think of (besides judging people) most of the time ends with a good result. So for the most part I think that snap-decisions help us communicate in many situations.
Sydney,
ReplyDeleteI really like the way you explained how you choose people. It makes sense that we judge them on posture and just getting to know them. It could be hard to work with someone who won’t talk to you. Also I liked the cash register example, it made me realize how much I actually do that without thinking about it.
Hello Everyone,
ReplyDeleteGreat discussion. I do want to stress however that you need to reference support to your responses.
Keep it up!
~M
Sydney G,
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned how you split the class into one of three groups when trying to make your final decision. The idea of the so-so group caught my attention and now that I think back about it I realize I had a similar issue. There were a few I knew I wanted to work with for sure but it was difficult to fill the remaining spots from the group of my maybes. In the end, I picked the last couple almost at random because I felt those who feel in the maybe group were all equal in group potential.
Often it is just a matter of seconds while sometimes it takes a while to know a stranger. We humans can be very judgmental and we often judge people the moment we see them. This is true everywhere but there are factors that should be taken into consideration especially when people from different cultures come together. I, being the only international student in the class, have a different way to perceive and judge other people because I come from a very different culture. Nevertheless, like everyone else I too passed judgment on my classmates the moment I saw them however, I had to keep reminding myself of the cultural difference. I am pretty sure I knew who I wanted to work with and who I thought I would not work well with but it did take me a lot more than just a second.
ReplyDeleteWe make snap decisions all the time and often they are good ones. In a practical situation, this reflex system of ours can help prevent us from getting badly burnt or injured; however, when we use our snap decision ability to judge people, things can often get pretty murky. It’s very unfortunate but we do live in a world where stereotypes are made about everyone, everywhere so while living in such a world, our thin slicing abilities can be very detrimental and negatively affect the way we judge people and how we communicate with them because it is very likely that our reflex system is highly influenced by the stereotype generalization that the society has created.
I am shocked that we unknowingly make our own opinions of people in the first three seconds. When we did the speed meeting activity I knew whether or not I wanted to work with someone in the first thirty seconds or so. This decision was completely based on my “gut feeling”. I found that I could most likely work well with anyone in our class. This made choosing only five people a very difficult task. I was confused and ended up choosing people nearly at random. I had never heard of “thin slicing”. Thinking about it though, it is something I do quite often. For example, when I was at a college fair I judged whether or not I wanted to visit a school by what I thought of it’s representative. I think thin slicing or snap decisions because as the cliché goes, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” I truly believe there is more to a person than meets the eye and we should not form opinions about people until we further know them.
ReplyDeleteGaurav: I love how you talked about snap judgements in relation to different cultures. I had never thought about it that way. I had also never thought about snap decisions being valuable but like you said the reflex system is a great example of this!
ReplyDeleteBrooke: I loved the honesty in your comment! I too like people who are themselves and of course funny! I was surprised that you had picked the same people before and after! This is completely different from me! Also, you had no problem picking (I am jealous)!
ReplyDeletePeople are judgmental. We don't realize it but we are but, it has to happen otherwise you would never really make friends or maybe get mixed into the wrong crowd. First impressions are vital.
ReplyDeleteDuring the interviews I knew I need to keep an open mind, and yes, it is natural for everybody to be judgemental when you initially meet someone. But having such a strong judgement on someone the first time you meet them is, in my opinion, a very poor choice. Who knows, maybe this person is someone you can build a strong and successful relationship with for the future. Depending on the situation, that could be to big of a risk for the possibilities that lie within the future. During all the interviews so many questions ran through my head. Is this person responsible? Does this person communicate efficiently? Would I enjoy making a group effort with this person? But it is impossible to obtain the answer to all the questions you have, based off a first impression.
ReplyDeleteI personally do not agree with the statement that first impressions are everything. When you first meet someone, there are so many factors connecting with how the person seems to be at that very moment you meet them. Maybe they are having a bad day? You never know. The person that could be having a bad day, could be your next best and most trusted friend, the person could be a great boyfriend or girlfriend, the person could be a fantastic group member. Passing judgement immediately only eliminates all the potential possibilities from that one person that is having a bad day.
Now, again its only natural for us to judge, but it takes a lot of open mindedness in order to make an accurate judgement. And it is understandable to judge when "speed dating" considering you only have a limited amount of time to decide what you think about a person. When it came time to choose 5 group members out of 22 students, the only thing to do is make quick judgement.