It took Amy only a few minutes to make up her mind: I’ve got absolutely nothing in common with this guy. She wasn’t sure why, but she was convinced. Was it his two-day stubble? The tattered jeans? Perhaps the way he stared at her while they talked? In any case, after a mere five minutes Amy was already wishing she had never agreed to this blind date with Andy. Now she would have to spend several hours in a bar with a guy who didn’t understand why sports don’t do it for her and why she prefers to read. I know his type, she sighed to herself. Conceited, careless. I’ll bet he’s going to tell me all about rock climbing and what a success he is. This is going to be a long evening.
Is Amy right? Or has she misjudged? After all, for decades psychologists have told us that people should not rate others based on looks or first impressions–we should not judge a book by its cover. Too often we subconsciously or even consciously adhere to stereotypes. To Amy, stubble represents laziness and torn jeans sloppiness and immaturity, and together they perhaps belie a guy who is trying too hard to look casually cool when a shave and slacks would do much better. And Andy’s excessive talk about sports shows that he is just another guy who is self-absorbed with his own machismo. Yet social psychologists have warned that such compartmentalized thinking closes our minds and distorts our vision of reality. We also tend to generalize about a person’s character from his behavior in a particular situation. If a cashier looks dour, we may conclude that he probably hates people. Researchers call such unjustified conclusions fundamental attribution errors.
But are we really that far off in judging people by their looks and deeds? New psychological work shows that if we engage in only a few minutes of thoughtful observation we can reach surprisingly accurate conclusions about strangers, even when they are not in the room. Researchers point out that the conventional wisdom about the fallibility of first impressions was based on very little study. Few psychologists examined the phenomenon of first impressions, because they were unwilling to risk years of work only to reach what seemed to be common truisms.
Furthermore, according to a recent survey by psychologists Joachim I. Krueger of Brown University and David C. Funder of the University of California at Riverside, prior research that intended to uncover evidence of misjudgment was almost always likely to find it because of flawed test design. The new, though still controversial, view is that with a little savvy observation, many of us are quite good at sizing up other people.
Quantifying Judgment
As soon as two strangers meet, they begin to speculate about each other. Hairstyle, facial expressions, figure, clothing, gestures–all these cues transmit signals that we evaluate within minutes or even seconds. And as soon as the other person speaks, a flood of additional information reaches us: How loud is his voice? Is it shaky or firm? How carefully does he choose his words?
Are these signs enough for us to form an opinion of the other person’s personality? Arriving at a scientific answer is tricky, in part because it is difficult for researchers to quantify the accuracy of a judgment. For a long time, psychologists could not even agree on a definition of personality. These impediments have lessened in recent years, however, as several methods have been developed that allow individuals to conveniently gauge their fellows.
The device that has risen to greatest prominence is the so-called five-factor, or big five, model. Psychologists originally developed the model to help them consistently describe patient personalities and possible personality disorders by mathematically combining five descriptive factors in various ways. People who undergo clinical assessment and fall at the extreme ends of a scale for a given trait, for example, may be likely to have a disorder linked to that trait. Researchers have figured out how to use the same factors, however, to assess the appropriateness of first impressions.
The five factors used to analyze a person under scrutiny are known by the acronym OCEAN: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. In general, openness measures how willing a person is to adjust his or her habits or views. Conscientiousness reflects how much the individual takes other people into account when making decisions. Extroversion ranks how outgoing someone is with others and how willing he or she is to explore new situations. Agreeableness indicates how well the person gets along with others. And neuroticism rates the person on a scale running from stable to anxious to volatile.
Since this model was first embraced in the early 1990s, several psychologists have tried to weed out the overlapping factors and have proposed other, more streamlined sets, such as the psychoticism-extroversion-neuroticism, or PEN, theory developed soon after by the late renowned University of London psychologist Hans J. Eysenck. In the past five years or so, still others have adapted these models to study how well test subjects perform when assessing people they meet for the first time. By introducing subjects to volunteers and having them fill out questionnaires afterward or by videotaping first encounters, the researchers have cast new light on how well we judge our fellow human beings. They have also created some schemes we all can use to size ourselves up [see box on page 56].
Telltale Clues to Character
Psychologist Samuel D. Gosling of the University of Texas at Austin is a leader in the field of assessing how well we evaluate others. He has taken his rubrics into some novel arenas. According to Gosling, it is not even necessary to be in the company of another person to make a reliable estimation about some of his or her traits; it is possible to get an impression by noting the person’s external trappings.
The first set of signs denotes identity claims–symbols that an individual consciously creates to communicate to the outside world. For example, a student who decorates his dorm room with a picture of Albert Einstein is trying to convey something about his intellectual values. Some students cover their walls with rock music posters and beer ads, whereas others may only hang bookshelves to hold neat rows of classic novels. Identity claims can be more subtle, too, such as when someone displays photographs of friends to demonstrate sociability.
Behavioral residues, in contrast, are left unconsciously: compact-disc cases that happen to be scattered across a desk reveal musical taste, whereas dirty soccer socks on the floor are evidence of involvement in sports (and a lax attitude about tidiness). Sometimes behavioral residues are not easy to differentiate from identity claims–hang-gliding equipment may be perched in the corner of a room because there was no space in the closet or because the owner wants to flaunt his love of adventure.
Let us assume that Amy had been able to peek into Andy’s apartment or office before their uncomfortable date began. Would she have turned him down ahead of time? In one study by Gosling, eight test subjects each had a chance to look at offices belonging to 70 different workers. Because the workers were not permitted to change anything before these inspections, the test subjects not only got a sense of each space’s decor but also its state of organization. In addition, each worker had completed a personality questionnaire and named two good friends who were then asked to evaluate his or her character. The results served as a reference against which the eight subjects’ judgments could be compared.
The subjects’ assessments of the workers’ personalities were remarkably accurate, especially when it came to predicting how open and extroverted each worker was. They also were frequently on the mark when it came to conscientiousness and emotional stability.
The subjects also supplied Gosling with comprehensive lists of observations they had used in their assessments. Gosling’s team tried to determine which of these indices were most fundamental. A room that was clean and well organized was seen as a strong sign of conscientiousness. Inventive decorations seemed to indicate openness. If Amy had seen Andy’s office, which is in a constant messy state, she may have questioned his compatibility much earlier.
Exposed at Home
Gosling has also shown that strangers can gauge a person’s character by looking at her home and even her Web site. Because employees generally don’t set the floor plan of their own offices, a person’s living space should be an even better environment from which to glean insight. In a separate study overseen by Gosling, test subjects looked at 80 student apartments. They correctly evaluated a clean and tidy space as an indication of discipline and dependability. The range of visible books and periodicals, but not their quantity, was also a reliable indicator of openness–willingness to tolerate other people’s views.
Surprisingly, the test subjects were also able to evaluate–to some extent–the emotional stability and agreeableness of the occupant. No reliable set of observations correlated with the correct assessments, however, so it is still unclear how the subjects arrived at their conclusions. Gosling says it is possible that they in part fell back on correct prejudices–for example, that women tend to rate themselves and be rated by others as more emotionally volatile than men.
Of course, it is unlikely that Amy would have inspected Andy’s bedroom before their first date. But she could certainly be angry with herself that she took her girlfriend’s sketchy information about him at face value (nice guy, recently on the rebound) and did not try to find out more. If she had done an Internet search, she would have found his personal home page and discovered that he has read many books by beatnik Charles Bukowski, which might partially explain a penchant for tattered clothing but also an interest in literature.
But how much does the usually well-groomed image projected on a Web page tell us about a person’s actual character? A lot, if the content is scrutinized for sense and not for any specific details. Items on a Web page have been deliberately placed there–they are identity claims. But what is placed, how it is arranged, what is stressed and linked give insight into character. Gosling and an assistant instructor in his department, Simine Vazire, recently published a study of Web page attributes and found that a person’s home page is a good barometer of openness, followed by conscientiousness, extroversion and emotional stability. Agreeableness is not reflected well. Home pages give at least as much information as the state of a person’s office, Gosling says. Web sites can even provide some behavioral residues–for example, inadvertent spelling or grammatical errors–that may influence a viewer’s judgment.
Be Mindful, Not Quick
As telling as Web sites, homes and offices can be, face-to-face interaction is still the strongest source of an accurate judgment. Even though Amy knew almost nothing about Andy, she formulated a definite image within just a few minutes. A growing number of recent studies indicate that although individuals differ in their degree of social perception, the ability to reach good conclusions from first impressions is relatively well developed in most people.
The key is understanding that some kind of rational process must be used to reach that conclusion. Quick glances, gut reactions and clichs do not suffice. And misjudgments are likely if a meeting is too short or contains too few indicators to draw on. For example, a meta-analysis conducted in 2002 confirms that we tend to judge good-looking people as more intelligent than others. But what personnel department would rely on such uncertain data to decide on whom to hire?
Few of us are so naive as to judge intelligence solely on appearance. In 1995 Peter Borkenau, now at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, and his colleague Anette Liebler, now at the Center for Community Psychiatry in Detmold, Germany, demonstrated how quickly appearance pales in significance as an indicator when a person begins to speak. Recently Borkenau published another study showing that we need to listen to someone read for only three minutes to construct a rather accurate image of his or her intellectual capacities. Before Amy ventures out again, she might consider phoning her date and asking him to read the newspaper headlines to her.
Contrary to what might have been expected from their initial disconnects, Amy and Andy ended up having a pretty good time. Andy realized that Amy was not responding to his sports stories. Instead he began to tell her about his trip to China. He also listened attentively as she talked about her work in the hotel industry, and he asked about her taste in literature.
Amy’s initial impression–that Andy may not be a paragon of dependability–was confirmed in their conversation. And her suspicion that he really did not fit the image she was looking for in a future partner held, too. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the evening.
Is Amy right? Or has she misjudged? After all, for decades psychologists have told us that people should not rate others based on looks or first impressions–we should not judge a book by its cover. Too often we subconsciously or even consciously adhere to stereotypes. To Amy, stubble represents laziness and torn jeans sloppiness and immaturity, and together they perhaps belie a guy who is trying too hard to look casually cool when a shave and slacks would do much better. And Andy’s excessive talk about sports shows that he is just another guy who is self-absorbed with his own machismo. Yet social psychologists have warned that such compartmentalized thinking closes our minds and distorts our vision of reality. We also tend to generalize about a person’s character from his behavior in a particular situation. If a cashier looks dour, we may conclude that he probably hates people. Researchers call such unjustified conclusions fundamental attribution errors.
But are we really that far off in judging people by their looks and deeds? New psychological work shows that if we engage in only a few minutes of thoughtful observation we can reach surprisingly accurate conclusions about strangers, even when they are not in the room. Researchers point out that the conventional wisdom about the fallibility of first impressions was based on very little study. Few psychologists examined the phenomenon of first impressions, because they were unwilling to risk years of work only to reach what seemed to be common truisms.
Furthermore, according to a recent survey by psychologists Joachim I. Krueger of Brown University and David C. Funder of the University of California at Riverside, prior research that intended to uncover evidence of misjudgment was almost always likely to find it because of flawed test design. The new, though still controversial, view is that with a little savvy observation, many of us are quite good at sizing up other people.
Quantifying Judgment
As soon as two strangers meet, they begin to speculate about each other. Hairstyle, facial expressions, figure, clothing, gestures–all these cues transmit signals that we evaluate within minutes or even seconds. And as soon as the other person speaks, a flood of additional information reaches us: How loud is his voice? Is it shaky or firm? How carefully does he choose his words?
Are these signs enough for us to form an opinion of the other person’s personality? Arriving at a scientific answer is tricky, in part because it is difficult for researchers to quantify the accuracy of a judgment. For a long time, psychologists could not even agree on a definition of personality. These impediments have lessened in recent years, however, as several methods have been developed that allow individuals to conveniently gauge their fellows.
The device that has risen to greatest prominence is the so-called five-factor, or big five, model. Psychologists originally developed the model to help them consistently describe patient personalities and possible personality disorders by mathematically combining five descriptive factors in various ways. People who undergo clinical assessment and fall at the extreme ends of a scale for a given trait, for example, may be likely to have a disorder linked to that trait. Researchers have figured out how to use the same factors, however, to assess the appropriateness of first impressions.
The five factors used to analyze a person under scrutiny are known by the acronym OCEAN: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. In general, openness measures how willing a person is to adjust his or her habits or views. Conscientiousness reflects how much the individual takes other people into account when making decisions. Extroversion ranks how outgoing someone is with others and how willing he or she is to explore new situations. Agreeableness indicates how well the person gets along with others. And neuroticism rates the person on a scale running from stable to anxious to volatile.
Since this model was first embraced in the early 1990s, several psychologists have tried to weed out the overlapping factors and have proposed other, more streamlined sets, such as the psychoticism-extroversion-neuroticism, or PEN, theory developed soon after by the late renowned University of London psychologist Hans J. Eysenck. In the past five years or so, still others have adapted these models to study how well test subjects perform when assessing people they meet for the first time. By introducing subjects to volunteers and having them fill out questionnaires afterward or by videotaping first encounters, the researchers have cast new light on how well we judge our fellow human beings. They have also created some schemes we all can use to size ourselves up [see box on page 56].
Telltale Clues to Character
Psychologist Samuel D. Gosling of the University of Texas at Austin is a leader in the field of assessing how well we evaluate others. He has taken his rubrics into some novel arenas. According to Gosling, it is not even necessary to be in the company of another person to make a reliable estimation about some of his or her traits; it is possible to get an impression by noting the person’s external trappings.
The first set of signs denotes identity claims–symbols that an individual consciously creates to communicate to the outside world. For example, a student who decorates his dorm room with a picture of Albert Einstein is trying to convey something about his intellectual values. Some students cover their walls with rock music posters and beer ads, whereas others may only hang bookshelves to hold neat rows of classic novels. Identity claims can be more subtle, too, such as when someone displays photographs of friends to demonstrate sociability.
Behavioral residues, in contrast, are left unconsciously: compact-disc cases that happen to be scattered across a desk reveal musical taste, whereas dirty soccer socks on the floor are evidence of involvement in sports (and a lax attitude about tidiness). Sometimes behavioral residues are not easy to differentiate from identity claims–hang-gliding equipment may be perched in the corner of a room because there was no space in the closet or because the owner wants to flaunt his love of adventure.
Let us assume that Amy had been able to peek into Andy’s apartment or office before their uncomfortable date began. Would she have turned him down ahead of time? In one study by Gosling, eight test subjects each had a chance to look at offices belonging to 70 different workers. Because the workers were not permitted to change anything before these inspections, the test subjects not only got a sense of each space’s decor but also its state of organization. In addition, each worker had completed a personality questionnaire and named two good friends who were then asked to evaluate his or her character. The results served as a reference against which the eight subjects’ judgments could be compared.
The subjects’ assessments of the workers’ personalities were remarkably accurate, especially when it came to predicting how open and extroverted each worker was. They also were frequently on the mark when it came to conscientiousness and emotional stability.
The subjects also supplied Gosling with comprehensive lists of observations they had used in their assessments. Gosling’s team tried to determine which of these indices were most fundamental. A room that was clean and well organized was seen as a strong sign of conscientiousness. Inventive decorations seemed to indicate openness. If Amy had seen Andy’s office, which is in a constant messy state, she may have questioned his compatibility much earlier.
Exposed at Home
Gosling has also shown that strangers can gauge a person’s character by looking at her home and even her Web site. Because employees generally don’t set the floor plan of their own offices, a person’s living space should be an even better environment from which to glean insight. In a separate study overseen by Gosling, test subjects looked at 80 student apartments. They correctly evaluated a clean and tidy space as an indication of discipline and dependability. The range of visible books and periodicals, but not their quantity, was also a reliable indicator of openness–willingness to tolerate other people’s views.
Surprisingly, the test subjects were also able to evaluate–to some extent–the emotional stability and agreeableness of the occupant. No reliable set of observations correlated with the correct assessments, however, so it is still unclear how the subjects arrived at their conclusions. Gosling says it is possible that they in part fell back on correct prejudices–for example, that women tend to rate themselves and be rated by others as more emotionally volatile than men.
Of course, it is unlikely that Amy would have inspected Andy’s bedroom before their first date. But she could certainly be angry with herself that she took her girlfriend’s sketchy information about him at face value (nice guy, recently on the rebound) and did not try to find out more. If she had done an Internet search, she would have found his personal home page and discovered that he has read many books by beatnik Charles Bukowski, which might partially explain a penchant for tattered clothing but also an interest in literature.
But how much does the usually well-groomed image projected on a Web page tell us about a person’s actual character? A lot, if the content is scrutinized for sense and not for any specific details. Items on a Web page have been deliberately placed there–they are identity claims. But what is placed, how it is arranged, what is stressed and linked give insight into character. Gosling and an assistant instructor in his department, Simine Vazire, recently published a study of Web page attributes and found that a person’s home page is a good barometer of openness, followed by conscientiousness, extroversion and emotional stability. Agreeableness is not reflected well. Home pages give at least as much information as the state of a person’s office, Gosling says. Web sites can even provide some behavioral residues–for example, inadvertent spelling or grammatical errors–that may influence a viewer’s judgment.
Be Mindful, Not Quick
As telling as Web sites, homes and offices can be, face-to-face interaction is still the strongest source of an accurate judgment. Even though Amy knew almost nothing about Andy, she formulated a definite image within just a few minutes. A growing number of recent studies indicate that although individuals differ in their degree of social perception, the ability to reach good conclusions from first impressions is relatively well developed in most people.
The key is understanding that some kind of rational process must be used to reach that conclusion. Quick glances, gut reactions and clichs do not suffice. And misjudgments are likely if a meeting is too short or contains too few indicators to draw on. For example, a meta-analysis conducted in 2002 confirms that we tend to judge good-looking people as more intelligent than others. But what personnel department would rely on such uncertain data to decide on whom to hire?
Few of us are so naive as to judge intelligence solely on appearance. In 1995 Peter Borkenau, now at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, and his colleague Anette Liebler, now at the Center for Community Psychiatry in Detmold, Germany, demonstrated how quickly appearance pales in significance as an indicator when a person begins to speak. Recently Borkenau published another study showing that we need to listen to someone read for only three minutes to construct a rather accurate image of his or her intellectual capacities. Before Amy ventures out again, she might consider phoning her date and asking him to read the newspaper headlines to her.
Contrary to what might have been expected from their initial disconnects, Amy and Andy ended up having a pretty good time. Andy realized that Amy was not responding to his sports stories. Instead he began to tell her about his trip to China. He also listened attentively as she talked about her work in the hotel industry, and he asked about her taste in literature.
Amy’s initial impression–that Andy may not be a paragon of dependability–was confirmed in their conversation. And her suspicion that he really did not fit the image she was looking for in a future partner held, too. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the evening.
