In real life, the ‘cover’ of people, what they wear, how they look, and their behavior can often misrepresent what they really are. Like the cover of a book, first impressions are not always right, it can be inaccurate, and not as true as what it really is. It is true that everyone often makes a wrong judgment on first impressions, people who are of a different nationality, race, and ethnicity, they can skew and invalidate first impression because they have different ways in how they meet someone new.
In addition, every race and ethnicity has their own type of body language, and the way they speak in daily life because people from different cultures may not share a similar understanding in their communication regarding the same symbols. People often consider their snap judgments as fact without getting to know someone who they have met better and deeply first. They make snap judgments continually throughout the day. They read expressions, check out body posture, watch gestures, assess clothing, and make a judgment right away & instantly. Snap judgment is not everything.
Furthermore, we, oftentimes, are lazy to make fair assessment to someone’s character. When we get more options to judge someone’s character, we tend to become more superficial about it. Without realizing it, we automatically have already made a wrong judgment because we just depend on first impressions rather than getting to know them first. We’re too lazy to find a way to make fair assessment to someone’s character. Eventually, it leads us to realize that it’s so hard to confront our flawed judgments so we usually just stuck in our snap judgments. Think about this: We often get a bad feeling about someone and then we never genuinely try to prove our hunch wrong or right. That’s a lot of hard work that most of us are frankly not willing to do. We never even think about proving our intuition wrong.
Basically, time limits our ability to get to know someone at his/her core. Sure, we can get either a positive or negative vibe about a person when the first time we meet him/her. But, it can’t be our excuse to judge their personality just based on our quick meeting. Because, time limits our ability to get to know someone beyond a superficial level. Our present emotional state also can impact the way we act. And plus, a quick meeting with a short time undoubtedly limits our ability to get to know someone so that no wonder we can end up judging someone just based on their impressions.
Additionally, people aren’t easy to figure out. There are layers behind a persona and sometimes, in order to peel those layers back, time is an essential factor to do so. A 10 seconds meeting can’t help us to make a correct judgment about someone’s core. In the end, people can’t make a quick fair judgment on someone’s impressions. We surely can’t make a correct judgment in a short timeframe. So, that’s why we all have friends that, at first glance, we didn’t like very much but after we got to know each other better, then we started saying that apparently they’re good friends. See? Just be mindful towards people.
In sum, first impressions aren’t always accurate. Based off of first impressions and looking back on some people you’ve met, how often do you perceive the person you know now in a completely different light than the way you did when you initially met him or her? That picture you painted of this person in your mind may not have been spot on. That’s why we should walk in someone else’s shoes first before we make our own assessment. Do yourself a favor next time and don’t let your first impression be the final judgment call.
