We’ve all had this experience: you meet someone new and think they’re just great. Only to discover a few weeks later that they’re not great at all. In fact they’re driving you nuts. Or they’re abusive. Or unreliable. In other words, your initial impression of their character was wrong. And that matters, because we need to be able to make quick, reliable, judgements about people. Who to be friends with? Who to employ? Who to date? Split second choices like these can change your life. And yet most of us know someone who’s been betrayed by a trusted buddy. Or whose spouse has just had an affair... Deciding who to trust is so important that your brain’s wired up to make the decision automatically. And in fact it does pretty well. Within seconds you’ll have sized up someone new to an accuracy of around seventy percent. That’s pretty good going when you think about all the factors that have to be taken into account. But seventy percent accuracy also means an error rate of thirty percent. So we need to be careful about first impressions! There are a number of reasons why we make mistakes. Like we overlook the possibility that someone’s behaviour might be affected by their circumstances. People in restaurants for example, are behaving ‘posh’ and not showing their normal character. Someone reading a very moving book might appear emotional, but the rest of the time they’ll be quite different. Psychologists call this problem ‘the fundamental attribution error.’ It’s our tendency to assume someone else’s behaviour is due to their personality rather than their external circumstances. And to do exactly the reverse to ourselves! So if my friend fails an exam, it’s because he’s lazy. But if I do badly, it’s because my teacher failed to prepare me for the right questions! Generally, we also only notice other people’s more obvious traits, such as the outgoing nature of an extrovert, and miss their more private feelings, like a tendency to be suspicious. And we rarely take account of our own feelings. So you’re much more likely to like someone new when you’re feeling good, for example, and much more likely to notice their bad side if your life’s been hard recently. We tend to think that anyone who is physically attractive is also intelligent. People who have big eyes are also honest. Tall people are also good leaders. Anyone with a deep voice will also be a good lover. The list’s endless – and there’s not much truth in any of them! We assume that we’ll grow to like people more as we spend more time with them, while what actually happens is usually the reverse. And we judge people not as individuals but as members of their social group. So our judgement is coloured by our preference for some groups over others, such as gender, profession, nationality and so on. We also tend to judge people from our own social group more harshly than others, and once we’ve made an initial impression to only notice things that seem to back up our feelings. Called the confirmation bias, that’s also the reason why it’s so difficult to recover from a bad reputation, no matter how much you’ve changed! All these mistakes occur because it can take weeks to make a one hundred percent accurate judgement of someone’s character. So our brain takes shortcuts, in other words, because it’s better to be seventy percent right in a few seconds rather than one hundred percent right in six weeks. By which time your new friend’s stolen your life’s savings! But it’s also important to remember that thirty percent error rate! Particularly in your relationships. Because even when you’ve known someone for a while, it doesn’t mean you know everything there is to know about them. Nothing could be further from the truth. And when you discover you’re wrong – like they’re unfaithful – the results can be devastating. So although it’s natural to believe we’re good judges of character – just like we all believe we’re ‘above average’ drivers – we really do make mistakes. So resist the urge to make up your mind too soon. And watch for the possibility you’ve misjudged the people around you. You’ll find you’ll make better friends – and much longer lasting relationships.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 11:53:43 +0000
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