Judging a book by its cover
23 Aug 2006
Just like instant coffee and instant messenger, there is “instant dislike”. You meet someone for the first time and you just know you do not like them or don’t trust them. There is no reasonable explanation, you just don’t like them. There have been a few people in my past that I have made instant enemies with. Which later turned out to be justified or may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I have a theory why people do this. It comes from our early ancestors on the savanna, popping their head up from the grass and quickly looking around to see if that saber-tooth tiger was prey or predator. Or the person coming towards you at the waterhole was friend or foe. In order to survive you had a split second to size up the threat and categorize them.
From News@Princeton (via: Boing Boing: Snap character judgements)
“The link between facial features and character may be tenuous at best, but that doesn’t stop our minds from sizing other people up at a glance,” said Todorov, an assistant professor of psychology. “We decide very quickly whether a person possesses many of the traits we feel are important, such as likeability and competence, even though we have not exchanged a single word with them. It appears that we are hard-wired to draw these inferences in a fast, unreflective way…”
