First Impression
Can we trust first impressions?
In a split second, our brain judges whether someone is a friend or an enemy, loyal, attractive or neither. But can first impressions ever be correct? By Hélène Fresnel and Laurent Bègue
by Psychologies
Marie, 36, had a loving husband and a baby, but was unhappy, and felt she didn't really know who she was anymore. 'I'd just given birth to my little girl,' she says. 'I felt disconnected from my body, which had changed so much during pregnancy, and was extremely insecure. So I signed up for a self-image workshop.'
There were 30 participants. The first day began with an exercise called 'The crystal ball'. 'Each person in turn had to stand silently in the middle of the room. The others, sitting down, had to give their first impressions of that person. When it was my turn, they all said that they felt I was hesitating between two stages - a chubby, awkward adolescent, and a young woman comfortable with her curves. I felt so completely transparent that I burst into tears.'
So is the impression we give always accurate? Can others 'read' us, even if we don't want them to? And what about the way we see others - what does the image we get of them say about us? There are plenty of books that promise to decode people's body language and personality, but they aren't really worth reading, according to the psychiatrist Antoine Pelissolo. 'No one can read minds, but any reasonably attentive individual can get a feel for another person,' he says.
Continue reading the article on psychologies.co.uk