reader input: women and first impressions
May 8, 2008 by Cash
In all the time I’ve spent studying socializing and ‘pick-up’ one thing that really stands out is the importance of a first impression.
Countless ‘experts’ point out that once you’ve been perceived as creepy/weird/etc there’s no going back. You can never recover from making a woman feel uneasy the first time she meets you.
I’m not here to argue the point.
In fact, I’ve seen so many examples of this in my own life, I’ve begun to question just how important any additional interactions really are. 
My question then is this; WHY is the first impression so important to women?
Here’s my guess; most women want to believe they are excellent judges of character. They want to trust their ‘intuition’. Therefore, they stand by their initial judgement of a man, regardless of potential long term accuracy.
What do you think?
From my studies in school (final year sociology major!) it’s not just women. All people, regardless of gender, form their initial impressions of people within the first few minutes. It’s a defense mechanism, because we learn as we grow up to associate certain characteristics with traits that are desirable or undesirable (gray hair = old, old = mean/rich/stupid/etc).
As for why they aren’t inclined to change? Each of us has had years of information supporting our view that, for example, old equals rich. Those views had a lot of time to build up “evidence” supporting it, and we tend to ignore information that would make us feel wrong. Even moreso if it’s a Value, such as “Christians are best” as these kinds of stereotypes and opinions are heavily ingrained and unlikely to change. It’s more about how you view your opinions (if you believe you’re always right, you aren’t likely to accept that you might be wrong) and for lack of better words, how closely that opinion is to your heart. If you’ve had a lot of evidence that x = y, then you’re unlikely to change it.
And, finally, people don’t like to change or admit they’re wrong.
But that’s just a basic observation.
OMG. First things first; Telan, seriously glad to see you! I was considering a whole post dedicated to determining your whereabouts since we hadn’t heard from you in awhile
Next, excellent points all. Your comment makes me think of that book “Blink” and how accurate our snap judgements can be, based as you said, on past experiences / ingrained beliefs, etc.
Sociology must be a fascinating major.
I may email you with a proposition…
Thanks again for commenting. I was beginning to worry.
Cash - I was totally going to bring up “Blink” as well. I guess I have now, but I think this is more than just sociology, but biology. I think we’re animals right, and we’ve had millions of years to get an instinct where we judge right away. It must have been successful for our ancestors, because first impressions are so important to us now.
Personally, I think it is a friend/foe reaction that we had when we were basically apes. Make the decision quickly. If you like them, integrate them into the group or mate with them. Otherwise, move on to find food or another mate. Our ancestors (evolutionarily speaking) wouldn’t have time to weight the pros & cons of someone’s personality and figure out what they wanted.
Of course, then we got big brains and that complicated it all.
I think this was covered in the evolutionary biology book, “The Red Queen” by Matt Ridley. Good book throughout.
Brian; you obviously have a good reading list!
Greg goes on and on about The Red Queen (it’s on my list) and all the implications.
I guess that part that is most fascinating to me is the ongoing weight of that first impression. Once you’re in, by and large, you’re in. Unless you really screw things up. Which I’m the undisputed king of
Erm…the reason most women trust their first instincts is because they are usually right. We learn quite early that when we go against our ‘intuition’ we find out too late that we should have listened to that inner voice. Honestly, I can count only once or twice in my entire life when I decided to ignore my first impressions, for whatever reason, that I was proved wrong. Most often I ended up in somesort of gnarly circumstance, and was kicking myself in the (keester?) for not heeding my intuition. After all, if we don’t listen to our inner voice, and things go wrong, who’s to blame? At this point in time I no longer take chances. Even if I’m wrong, I’d rather be ’safe than sorry. I know that most of the other women who read UM will probably agree with me about the validity of our instincts.
I’m not trying to claim somesort of ESP, it’s just that women seem to be more sensitive to things like body language, eye contact, and vocal inflections than men are.
I agree with this, from my experience. However, one case when it does not apply is when you meet via a social circle. If they know about you beforehand, or have heard anything good, you’re golden. Just like a woman likes to think she is a good judge of character, women also talk, so if you have several female friends that can give other women good compliments about you beforehand, it’s the easiest thing ever. You can mess everything up, and it still won’t hurt attraction. Well, you can’t keep messing up, but you’re safe despite a bad initial impression.
Aww, that’s sweet, thanks. But yeah, Brian has it down pretty well. Anthropology discusses the biology of friend-foe responses. After babies reach a point where they can more easily recognize faces, they’re more likely to respond to those that are a) attractive and b) smiling. (I’m trying without success to find the article that discussed the study…) And they typically respond better to people who speak the language they hear most and the race that they see most (and therefore is “their language and race” based on mom and dad.) They quickly build an “in group” and “out group” which implies it isn’t just a societal thing, but biological.