The Fine Art of First Impressions

“Don’t judge a book by its cover”. And yet, we all do. Even when we try our best to overwrite our natural biases, or to reevaluate our judgements once we know someone better, it’s our primordial instinct to judge everything we encounter. Without this safety mechanism, we would walk into the arms of danger completely unawares.

Whilst it may be more of a hindrance than a help to instantly assess a new colleague’s personality from your first encounter, it’s a great help to know the difference between a tiger and a rabbit, or to meet a stranger in an unfamiliar environment and judge whether or not the interaction is safe.

Of course, whatever judgement we pass during a first impression, we can be sure the other person is doing the same.

The powerful judgements we take away from a first impression are never going away. So why not invest in how to make a good one?

We need to relearn first impressions

Myths about first impressions are undermining our ability to connect with others. From a young age, when meeting someone for the first time we’re taught to plaster on a smile and flick through a pre-approved stack of stock questions: “How are you?” “What do you do for a living?” “How has your week been?”

We’ve made first impressions all about manners. And in doing so, we’ve lost the magic.

The consequences of a polite but un-enchanting first impression run deeper than we think. Interpersonal intelligence expert Vanessa Van Edwards describes humans as “contagious” beings — our emotional state rubs off on other people in even the most micro-interactions.

With simply an audio-recorded “hello”, her study found that individuals can not only pinpoint the emotional state of the speaker (happy or irritated) but will also consistently rate the owner of the happy “hello” as more likeable.

It seems there’s some truth in “you had me at hello!”

By busting long-held myths about first impressions, we can learn to leave a more powerful one.

Myth #1: We can hide our true feelings

No matter how much politeness we slather on to mask our bad mood, our non-verbal cues are dead giveaways. Traditional attempts to sweep our emotions under the carpet risk coming across as inauthentic.

Imagine I’ve worked myself up into a cold sweat about the presentation I’m about to give to a room full of strangers. And I meet you, one of the strangers who will be in the audience. Research shows that however confident my greeting, you will sense my fear.

How? Dr Lilianne Mujica-Parodi ran a study that gave sweat pads to novice skydivers and treadmill runners, then transferred the two types of sweat to nebulisers for unsuspecting research volunteers in a brain scanner to breathe in. A fate worse than confinement in a school sports changing room.

The remarkable result was that the volunteers’ amygdala and hypothalamus — brain regions associated with fear — were more active in people who breathed in the skydiving “fear” sweat compared with the treadmill sweat. People can literally smell fear.

So what can we do, if we can’t hide our true emotional state? Stop trying to hide it. When someone replies “yeah I’m good, thanks” with a flat tone of voice or awkward body language, we pick up on their emotional state before we process the words. When we notice something doesn’t match, we feel awkward too. Why are we all tempted to keep lying when we know the game is up?

Instead, it pays to show some vulnerability. Admit to the stranger that you’re a little nervous before the big presentation or explain why you’re not feeling fine today. Add colour to your response in a way that invites connection.

Someone I bump into every few months and exchange “hey, how are you? I’m fine thanks, you?” recently broke the cycle: “I’m ok now, if you’d asked me a couple of weeks ago I’d have said I’d been having a rough time — we’ve had a few people leaving, work has been full-on, but it has since calmed down and I’m back on track.” The honesty, authenticity allowed me to better connect and empathise with them, moving our interactions beyond surface level.

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Myth #2: We weigh our words, not our gestures

When we meet someone, where is the first place we look? According to Van Edwards it’s not their face, but their hands. Why? The same reason the US police force approach every violent situation with the words “let me see your hands!” and will use force to bring people’s hands into view. Hands up, and you’re not hiding anything.

This is especially important when meeting someone for the first time. When we meet someone whose hands are out of sight, our brain is unable to focus on anything else. We also have cavemen to thank for this — another form of primordial threat detection.

But it’s not just about having our hands open and available for our conversation partner to see, it’s about using them to tell the real story they’re listening to. Van Edwards explains that humans place 12.5 times more weight on hand gestures than on words. If we send the wrong signals with our hands, we confuse the listener. And if we send the right signals, we amplify.

In her communications bestseller How to Talk to Anyone, Leil Lowndes explains how she once saw a woman enter the room and pivot towards a small child, opening her arms wide, beaming from ear-to-ear and swooping in to give them a “hello” hug. The eye contact and the large, open gestures in this move should set a benchmark for how we greet people, she explains. Whilst this seems extreme, we often pare down our greetings so much that the people we’re greeting do not feel seen.

Myth #3: We trade off “excited” for “expected”

At parties, many of us (consciously or subconsciously) are focused on fitting in. Don’t spill your drink on anyone, don’t trip over your own feet and please don’t ramble on about your mum’s cat. Except, in the process of not creating any commotion, we create boredom or even elicit negative emotions.

Our opening questions are bland: “been busy recently?” and seemingly harmless, but Van Edwards explains that such questions often have a detrimental effect. The listener hones in on the word “busy” and is instantly prompted to think about all the negativity that surrounded their busy week.

Instead, Van Edwards and her team attempted to craft questions that would produce dopamine in the listener, lifting the mood and creating excitement. “Been up to anything exciting recently?” “What was the best part of your day?” “What are your holiday plans?” All these questions help the listener to focus on the positive parts of their week or an upcoming moment of positivity in the future, starting the conversation on a much stronger note.

When we consider that with a simple first impression, we are capable of non-verbally communicating our emotional state (especially fear) and eliciting a positive or negative emotional reaction in our listener, the power of getting that first impression right should not be underestimated.

What opportunities would emerge if we made “great first impressions” our superpower?

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