Shoes as a source of first impressions

Surprisingly minimal appearance cues lead perceivers to accurately judge others’ personality, status, or politics. We investigated people’s precision in judging characteristics of an unknown person, based solely on the shoes he or she wears most often. Participants provided photographs of their shoes, and during a separate session completed self-report measures. Coders rated the shoes on various dimensions, and these ratings were found to correlate with the owners’ personal characteristics. A new group of participants accurately judged the age, gender, income, and attachment anxiety of shoe owners based solely on the pictures. Shoes can indeed be used to evaluate others, at least in some domains.     

Handshaking, gender, personality, and first impressions

Although people's handshakes are thought to reflect their personality and influence our first impressions of them, these relations have seldom been formally investigated. One hundred twelve participants had their hand shaken twice by 4 trained coders (2 men and 2 women) and completed 4 personality measures. The participants' handshakes were stable and consistent across time and coders. There were also gender differences on most of the handshaking characteristics. A firm handshake was related positively to extraversion and emotional expressiveness and negatively to shyness and neuroticism; it was also positively related to openness to experience, but only for women. Finally, handshake characteristics were related to the impressions of the participants formed by the coders. These results demonstrate that personality traits, assessed through self-report, can predict specific behaviors assessed by trained observers. The pattern of relations among openness, gender, handshaking, and first impressions suggests that a firm handshake may be an effective form of self-promotion for women.     

First names and first impressions: A fragile relationship

Given only first names, reliable differences are found in guesses about personal characteristics. It was hypothesized that this finding is strongly dependent on the lack of interference from competing information. Therefore such first-name effects should be fragile in that, if a subject is exposed to additional and relevant material, the differential effect of a first name would be mitigated. This interpretation was tested by exposing one group of subjects to a set of good and bad male first names, while a second group encountered the same names accompanied by photographs. The results showed that there was a replication of previously reported differences between these good and bad names if no photograph was present, but the addition of the photograph blocked the differential effect of first names. The results paralleled a similar finding with female first names. Overall, the results argue against too much emphasis on the possible deleterious effects of a particular first name.     

Age-related similarities and differences in first impressions of trustworthiness

Trust is a particularly under-studied aspect of social relationships in older age. In the current study, young (n = 35) and older adults (n = 35) completed a series of one-shot social economic trust games in which they invested real money with trustees. There were potential gains with each investment and also a risk of losing everything if the trustee was untrustworthy. The reputation and facial appearance of each trustee were manipulated to make them appear more or less trustworthy. Results revealed that young and older adults invest more money with trustees whose facial appearance and reputation indicate that they are trustworthy rather than untrustworthy. However, older adults were more likely than young to invest with trustees who had a reputation for being untrustworthy. We discuss whether age-related differences in responding to negative information may account for an age-related increase in trust, particularly when trusting someone with a reputation for being uncooperative.     

A thin slice perspective on the accuracy of first impressions

The accuracy of first impressions was examined by investigating judged construct (negative affect, positive affect, the Big five personality variables, intelligence), exposure time (5, 20, 45, 60, and 300 s), and slice location (beginning, middle, end). Three hundred and thirty four judges rated 30 targets. Accuracy was defined as the correlation between a judge’s ratings and the target’s criterion scores on the same construct. Negative affect, extraversion, conscientiousness, and intelligence were judged moderately well after 5-s exposures; however, positive affect, neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness required more exposure time to achieve similar levels of accuracy. Overall, accuracy increased with exposure time, judgments based on later segments of the 5-min interactions were more accurate, and 60 s yielded the optimal ratio between accuracy and slice length. Results suggest that accuracy of first impressions depends on the type of judgment made, amount of exposure, and temporal location of the slice of judged social behavior.     

A demonstration of undergraduate students' first impressions and their ratings of pathology

An interactive team exercise based in the dual topic areas of social and abnormal psychology is described that employs videotaped case studies to sensitize students to the processes by which they form first impressions of other people, and to various issues regarding assessments of mental disorders. Each of three case studies is presented in two parts: Part I simulates a "first impression" condition--involving students' ratings of perceived pathology--by briefly showing only a patient (no soundtrack present), and Part 2 constitutes a "further disclosure" condition by giving more exposure-involving therapists' diagnoses and assessments-of the same patient with both sight and soundtrack presented. Data are reported from 12 introductory psychology classes in which students (N=367) rated the three patients on psychopathology as perceived severity of disorder as compared to the actual assessments (also contained on the videotapes) made by clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. The demonstration is useful in eliciting consistent and predictable first impressions from students, in stimulating classroom discussion about the value and accuracy of person perceptions and first impressions, and in alerting students to problems related to the identification of mental disorders.     

Remembering first impressions: Effects of intentionality and diagnosticity on subsequent memory

People rely on first impressions every day as an important tool to interpret social behavior. While research is beginning to reveal the neural underpinnings of first impressions, particularly through understanding the role of dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), little is known about the way in which first impressions are encoded into memory. This is surprising because first impressions are relevant from a social perspective for future interactions, requiring that they be transferred to memory. The present study used a subsequent-memory paradigm to test the conditions under which the dmPFC is implicated in the encoding of first impressions. We found that intentionally forming impressions engages the dmPFC more than does incidentally forming impressions, and that this engagement supports the encoding of remembered impressions. In addition, we found that diagnostic information, which more readily lends itself to forming trait impressions, engages the dmPFC more than does neutral information. These results indicate that the neural system subserving memory for impressions is sensitive to consciously formed impressions. The results also suggest a distinction between a social memory system and other explicit memory systems governed by the medial temporal lobes.     

Forming first impressions: The role of gender and normative accuracy in personality perception

Gender is associated with interpersonal sensitivity across different domains, with females, on average, demonstrating higher levels of interpersonal sensitivity than males. What underlies these gender differences in the accuracy of first impressions of personality remains unclear. Across two large video studies and a large round-robin design, perceivers’ gender was related to the accuracy of general personality trait impressions. Specifically, female perceivers achieved higher levels of accuracy, but only with respect to normative accuracy or perceiving what others are like in general. There were no significant gender differences in terms of distinctive accuracy or perceiving how others are different from the average person. Discussion considers how these findings relate to previously established gender differences in other domains of interpersonal sensitivity.     

Through the looking glass clearly: accuracy and assumed similarity in well-adjusted individuals' first impressions

Do well-adjusted individuals have particularly accurate insight into what others are like or are they biased, primarily seeing their own characteristics in others? In the current studies, the authors examined how psychologically adjusted individuals tend to see new acquaintances, directly comparing their levels of distinctive accuracy (accurately perceiving others' unique characteristics), normative accuracy (perceiving others as similar to the average person), and assumed similarity (perceiving others as similar to the self). Across two interactive, round-robin studies, well-adjusted individuals, compared with less adjusted individuals, did not perceive new acquaintances' unique characteristics more accurately but did perceive new acquaintances, on average, as similar to the average person, reflecting an accurate understanding of what people generally tend to be like. Furthermore, well-adjusted individuals had a biased tendency to perceive their own unique characteristics in others. Of note, both pre-existing perceiver adjustment and target-specific liking independently predicted greater accuracy and assumed similarity in first impressions. In sum, well-adjusted individuals see through the looking glass clearly: although they erroneously see others as possessing their own unique characteristics, they accurately understand what others generally tend to be like.     

Very long-term retention of a first language without rehearsal: A case study

A case study is presented of an American sign language-using deaf woman whose life circumstances were such that she had no opportunities to use her sign language over nearly 40 years, but whose recall of its lexicon and syntax were almost unimpaired when she resumed its use after that period. Implications for the role of memory in first language learning are compared with results for second languages, and the role of rehearsal and interference in remembering over very long periods is considered.     

Accuracy and assumed similarity in first impressions of personality: Differing associations at different levels of analysis

How are accuracy and assumed similarity associated in first impressions of personality? In a large-scale video perception study, accuracy and assumed similarity were strongly negatively associated across traits, consistent with past research (e.g., Beer & Watson, 2008). However, across perceivers and perceiver-target dyads, the ability to perceive others accurately was independent of the tendency to assume similarity with others. Thus, viewing others in general or specific others as overly similar to the self does not imply viewing them inaccurately. In sum, accuracy and assumed similarity are inversely related when examined across traits but are independent across perceivers and dyads.