Do First Impressions Actually Mean Anything?

First impressions can be made in just a fraction of a second and we might not even notice. But do first impressions actually matter at all? Psychology today has the answer to this question.

From past studies we know that first impressions can be formed almost instantly, but these first impressions aren't as accurate when people are shown different images of the same person instead of just one. A 2018 study is what proved this fact. In this study researchers showed six different images of 28 different people and had the group rate the people based on attractiveness. Based on the ratings given, the researchers sorted the six images for each person based on how the attractiveness was rated.

After this, a new group was brought in and asked to rate again. However, some of the faces were sorted in ascending order of attractiveness and others were in descending order. When comparing ratings, researchers found the individuals that had their images shown in descending order (most attractive to least) were rated higher than those in ascending order. This suggests that first impressions actually do matter due to the participants being more influenced by the first images.

A new study, however, found a flaw in the 2018 study. In the 2018 study, the final ratings of the face images may have been influenced by the participants' responses in the previous trial. In this new study, this issue was addressed by taking the same experimental design but only asking for one single rating based on the six different images. This means that they weren't rating every single image, they were instead giving one single overall rating. 

These results confirmed the 2018 study partially. The images that were shown in descending order tended to receive higher attractiveness ratings. However, the result was extremely small in comparison. In a follow-up study where the same images of faces were shown in a random order, researchers found no real evidence that the first images had a large impact on the ratings.

This means that the 2018 study concluded that first impressions based on face images don't really matter that much. This study also suggests that poor first impressions are likely bias to someone's opinion and how they view things based on past experiences. Luckily, these bias are usually small and easy to overcome.