Behavioral researcher Vanessa Van Edwards explains how your brain makes a trust decision about someone in three seconds. A positive first impression opens the door to real conversation. A negative one triggers your amygdala and shuts things down.
Why do these first impressions matter so much? And what do people notice about you in the first 3 seconds of meeting them?
Our brains are optimizers, so our brain knows that once we get started in interaction, it's going to have to focus on conversation. It's going to have to be smart. It's going to have to share stories. It's going to have to have a back and forth. So it wants to get the impression out of the way so it can focus on those other things. So the first 3 seconds is kind of your brain's hack of like, are we good? So that if we're good, great, it's smooth sailing going forward and I can focus on the content and the questions and the delivery. If it's not good, we kind of go, wait a minute, Uh-oh. And that's when a couple things can happen. So in a good first impression, we have trust, we have rapport. Usually as humans, we're trying to answer two basic questions about another person: can I trust you, and can I rely on you? In a good first impression, you are quickly signaling full of trust. You can trust me, I have good intention, and also you can rely on me, I know what I'm talking about. In a good first impression, those are answered, and then we go into small talk, we go into rapport, we can go into our pitch or presentation. In a bad first impression, you don't answer one of those questions. Either it's a trust issue, someone signals a red flag where your amygdala begins to light up and goes, I'm a little afraid, I feel uneasy, we get really tense. And here's where it gets interesting. I think people have different reactions to, I don't trust this person. Some people shut down, other people go on the offensive, and they try to figure out the trust answer by lots of verbal questions. And so I think that nailing that first impression is really important because it allows the interaction to happen. And if you don't nail it, you're going to trigger them to go into fight or flight.
