You’re Being Judged Faster Than You Think

First impressions are everything. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so you have to make it count. You have to nail those first few seconds of an interaction. No matter how many great conversation starters you ask or funny stories you tell, if you don't have a good first impression, nothing else matters. Studies have found that we not only decide if we like someone in the first few seconds, but also that that first impression stays with us. Princeton University psychologist Alex Todorov had people look at a microsecond of a video. Research subjects could predict with 70% accuracy who would win the election just from that microsecond of tape. Voters make their voting decisions from a good first impression alone. This tells us that people can make incredibly accurate snap judgments in a tenth of a second. We take a mental snapshot of someone and guess their competence, confidence, and likability in less than a second. Researchers think this is a survival mechanism that we've developed to decide very quickly if someone is friend or foe.