How accurate are our first impressions? With Nicholas Rule, PhD
3/25/202636 min
How much can you really tell about someone at first glance? Nicholas Rule, PhD, of the University of Toronto, talks about the science of first impressions: How your brain starts making judgments about other people in milliseconds--before you’re even aware of it--how accurate those judgments are and how they’re shaped by stereotypes and biases; the research on “gaydar”; to what degree you can pick up on traits like extraversion and trustworthiness; and the real-world consequences of our accurate – and inaccurate – snap judgments.
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First 90 secondsAngela Davis0:00
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Kim Mills· Host0:27
[gentle music] It's a cliche that you only get one chance to make a first impression, but it turns out that science bears this out. First impressions matter, and they're often surprisingly accurate. From the moment you meet someone, at a party, a job interview, or even just crossing paths at the grocery store, your brain is quickly summing them up. Whether you mean to do it or not, you're assigning people to social categories and making judgments about their personality and other qualities. But exactly how accurate are first impressions? What kinds of information can we glean about someone in the first moments of meeting them or even from just a photograph? Can you tell whether someone is extroverted, trustworthy, a good leader, gay or lesbian? What about their political leanings or whether they grew up wealthy? To what degree are our first impressions based on something real, and to what extent are they based on stereotypes or biases? And what are the real world consequences of our