How important is 'first impression' and to what extent?
It is true that the first impressions we get at the moment of first encounter on anyting, affect us greatly.-They easily take over your mind and constantly makes you think, react, and behave in the similar way and it's really hard to change your attitude.
When I look back myself, I think I have missed many chances due to my 'first impressions' on many things and the followed bias that led me to behave in certain ways.
For example- certain movies, after I saw the trailers or advertisements, I thought they were not the type of movies I prefer to watch and skipped them.
Some movies, I thought the storyline was so cliche and my perceptions even progressed to a negative feeling about those movies; that they were not good movies. A Few years later I happened to see those movies by chance and actually found out that they weren't so bad after all. Some of those movies, surprisingly, were very entertaining for me and now they are even one of my favorite movies.
I Even had similar experience with my friend. One of my friends, when I first saw her, I thought it would be the most likely that we become close friends. I didn't have bad feelings about her, but we seemed to have 'nothing' in common; Her ideas were so mature, she was always hard working and seemed to excell on any given work, and she reacted so cool on any situations or frustrating events. And I seemed to be everything BUT all those. Then one day we had a chance to chat a little and found out that no matter how different we seemed (and we were), we were connected very well anyways.
Now, she is one of my closest and most dependable friends.
What I have wrote are situations that I do 'realize' because my impressions and behaviors changed. There are sure to be many chances - either finding a good book, chance to be good friends with someone, trying new things, etc - that I have let go
and not even notice until now, because I clung on to my narrow first impressions which are not even very reliable ideas.
(Writing all this, I feel like such a fool. Too much affected by first impressions and so biased! :b)
First impressions seemed to have affected me my whole life.
I think everyone had similar experiences on first impressions somehow.
Like the main point of the class, it can prevent you from producing and accepting better ideas.So as the book suggests, we should "be wary of first impressions".
But no matter how hard one tries to be aware of his/her first impressions, I think everyone is bound to be affected by first impressions to some degress and its power controlling your mind is not so small.
Below are some cartoon cuts that I've found on the internet.
See how the cartoon characters react to the idea of 'first impression'.
(I thought it was so funny that the Asian businessman bowed in very low position, to make good first impression to his clients)
source) http://www.titusconsultingllc.com/services.html
source) http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/f/first_impression.asp
True, first impressions can be misleading and we can never be free from it’s' influence. I think there are some things that we can improve and cannot improve about our first impressions. For example, there are things that we are born with, such as our height, weight, and face etc. and these are hard to change. But this is not all. A persons' attitude toward life, their lifestyle, and personality are revealed in their looks and expressions. So people with good looks may give others a bad impression and people with unattractive looks may give a good impression because of their expression and attitude. Therefore, I think first impression is as important as inner side of a person.
ReplyDeletei love the cartoons! it's so funny with the babies :)
ReplyDeleteI mainly agree with kimsun, but I also think that you can change your outer appearance if you try hard. I heard from a very athletic and gorgeous woman (forgot her name) say this on TV:
"every woman can be beautiful if she tries. There is no ugly women in life, only lazy ones."
This really shocked me, because as you say we can't change our heights or looks (except plastic sergery) but if one really works out and tries to look more appealing, then I think anybody would look much healthier and confident, because they feel good about themselves!
we all know that we shouldn't judge someone just by their outer appearance but it's soooo tempting. I think that we all do it unconsciously:(
ReplyDeleteWhen I asked people what my first impressions were, they answered in a way that I actually expected. Maybe, I intended to be looked that way.. Some people do have a certain image that they are expecting to find of others. However, we all know that the first impressions can be misleading! Anyways.. many companies seek nice-looking candidates for their new employees these days! T.T (That's why I don't include my photo in CV)
ReplyDeleteOn one hand, I believe it is important to not judge anyone only based on first impressions. However, on the other hand, I think it is inevitable that people tend to judge others based on first impression. I think we do this without even noticing. Even though it is important to try not to judge people based on first impressions, because it does have such a big impact on how others think of you, I think it is also important to be conscious of what kind of first impression you exude to others. I've had a lot of experiences where many people thought that I was cold, stuck up, not so kind, and so on when they first saw me. I think it is due to the fact that I tend to not be the first one to reach out to people and speak. Many people judged me based on this first impression that they have of me, and I think it lasts for a very long time. And because of this I try to portray a different, more warm first impression, though I usually forget about it. Like this, I think being conscious of what kind of first impression you portray to others as important as not judging others your first impression of them.
ReplyDelete