Snap. Patti Wood
less than the time it takes to snap our fingers.1
We can process thousands of cues — whether visual, auditory, or tactile — and other nonverbal factors very quickly, so a snap impression occurs well before we’ve talked at length or exchanged business cards or email addresses. We form snap impressions not just when we meet face-to-face but also when we see someone in a photo, glance at her Facebook profile, read a text she has sent you, or hear her voice on the phone. We do this by noticing things we don’t even know we are noticing, and most research shows that only long experience with someone can alter our initial hit.
Research done by Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov at Princeton University found that people make judgments about attractiveness, likability, trustworthiness, competence, and aggressiveness after looking at people’s faces for just a tenth of a second. The researchers found that there was no significant change between snap decisions formed in one-tenth of a second and those formed during a longer exposure to a person’s face. Given more time (up to a full second), people’s fundamental judgment about the faces did not change. In fact, people became more confident in their judgment as the exposure time grew longer.2
The Science behind the Snap
Many regions of the brain are involved in forming and acting on a first impression. Research using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) on subjects as they formed first impressions of photographed faces and written profiles — each of which implied a different personality type — showed significant activity in two regions of the brain: the amygdala and the posterior cingulate cortex, or PCC.
The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain’s medial temporal lobe. It is primarily responsible for processing emotional responses (such as fear and anxiety) and for storing memories of emotional events. But it also plays a role in interpreting body language and facial expressions, particularly when they may indicate a threat. It’s the amygdala that helps you decide, “Can I trust this person not to hurt me?”
The PCC is involved in attention, memory, motivation, and decision making. It has been intensively studied in the field of neuroeconomics (which looks at brain activity and economic decision making) because of the role it plays in assessing risk and evaluating expected rewards or outcomes. Some researchers define it as hub connecting other parts of the brain. Both the amygdala and the PCC are interconnected with the thalamus.
The thalamus is not a limbic structure but it is involved in motor function and sensory perception. It functions as a relay station for two types of nerve impulses: those that carry sensory information (sights, sounds, tastes, smells), and those that control muscle movements. After receiving these incoming signals, the thalamus sends them to the appropriate part of the brain for further processing.3
(Go to www.snapfirstimpressions.com for two of my videos explaining more about first impressions: How We Form First Impressions and Four Ways We Act on Our First Impressions. Also, look for the link to the article “Recent Research on How First Impressions Are Formed.”)
In a snap, everything you see, hear, and observe is quickly processed by your brain and mixed into the unique package known as a first impression. You look at someone for the first time and snap! Your brain takes a “photograph,” taking in myriad cues all at once and forming a holistic image. These snap impressions use, in part, the emotional centers of the brain for this processing, and that helps to give them their powerful and lasting effect.
You may wonder, “How accurate can a snap be?” People are, on average, better than you might think at assessing certain aspects of personality and ability. A meta-analysis of forty-four studies measuring the accuracy of people’s first impressions showed their impressions to be highly accurate.4
What You Say Is Not That Important
David and his roommate, Mark, were waiting at the bar for Mark’s girlfriend. Looking up from his drink, David saw Mark’s girlfriend come in with another woman — a black-haired beauty worthy of a Sports Illustrated cover shoot. Stunned by this woman’s looks, David fretted over what he would say to make a good impression. He needn’t have worried; nonverbal cues matter more than words in a snap. The warm looks David and the black-haired beauty exchanged in that moment led to a marriage that has lasted thirty years (so far)!
When it comes to first impressions, nonverbal cues pack more than four times the punch of verbal ones. When we are face-to-face with someone, we can see his expressions, the look in his eyes, where his head is placed, the way he is sitting, his physical distance from objects and other people, and the signals in his gestures, as well as perceive the warmth or coolness in his voice. Facial cues rank first among all forms of communication in their influence on initial impressions.
In a person’s eyes we see interest, arousal, and power or submissiveness. In her gestures and posture we can understand her attitudes, level of confidence and optimism, and what type of relationship she might want. The amount of space she uses and keeps between herself and others helps us assess how much privacy she wants and how close emotionally she wants to be. We listen to a person’s words to ascertain mood, personality, and honesty; we watch her hands and her touch movements to see how supportive and warm she is.
Nonverbal snap cues are so accurate — 76 percent accurate, or higher — for two reasons.5 First, there is a genetic link between appearance and personality. We may have evolved to show our personalities on our faces and bodies because being readable makes it easier for people to socialize and interact, which is essential for survival. Just as the venomous Gila monster developed bright coloring over time that acts as a signal — the coloring tells potential predators that the lizard is dangerous — we have evolved to possess readability to make us appear less dangerous.
Second, our facial and bodily expressions reflect our emotions and, consequently, our personalities, and over time they become lasting facial features and body postures. We form snap impressions using body language and other nonverbal cues subconsciously and automatically, so they are not subject to unreliable conscious prejudices.
One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
— Voltaire
Processing nonverbal communication is not an exercise in linear thinking. Most of the time, we, like David after he met the dark-haired beauty, cannot trace the steps we use to process the myriad cues available to us. Rather, the cues explode around us like fireworks, or they are like floats and balloons at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade swirling before our eyes, or for many of us they just seem to come as feelings in the gut. For this reason, we may wonder if the conclusion we’ve come to is accurate. We may discount it, saying, “Oh, it’s only a hunch.” In reality, our hunches can be amazingly accurate.
Phillip Goldberg, in his book The Intuitive Edge, says that intuition “is the product of the mind’s capacity to do many things at once without our being aware of them.”6 In a snap, we can, in less than forty seconds of communication, process up to ten thousand units of nonverbal information. That’s ten thousand cues communicated between two people in less than a minute. We process that information into something valuable: an intuitive perception of the other person. The sheer volume of cues available to us helps make our first impressions reliable.
Think about it. If we totally disregarded the nonverbal cues, we would have only a few words, or perhaps sentences, in those first moments on which to base our impression. I don’t know about you, but the words “Hello, my name is Joe” don’t tell me a lot. Then consider how quickly and accurately we use nonverbal cues. In 1992, the researchers Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal found that looking at short examples of behavior (examples lasting under thirty seconds) can lead to predictions as accurate as those based on observing behavior for up to five minutes.7 Snap impressions are remarkably telling.
Forming a gut-level first impression is the first step in communicating. That impression dictates the reaction we expect to get, how we will relate to the other person, and all the other factors that affect how we form a relationship.
Right about now you may be saying,