The 6 Psychological Keys To Making Others Like You
Oscar Wilde once said that “there is never a second chance to make a good first impression” and he was right. And this thing about being liked by others begins with a furtive glance, and our unconscious dictates the sentence.
How to make a good impression so that others like you?
Social psychologist John Bargh of Yale University concluded in his research that our brain only needs two tenths of a second to form the first impression. Later the information was expanded and thanks to neuroimaging techniques it was shown that this first impression comes from the limbic system, which is the brain system in charge of emotional management, and more specifically, the amygdala.
In this short process we judge people: if they have made a good impression on us, it will be easier for us to be predisposed to establish a relationship with them. If they have made a bad impression on us… it will be much more difficult for them.
The key is in the first impression
In fact, rationality is far from being involved in the impression formation process and it is more of an emotional and unconscious process. Therefore, the speed of formation, emotionality and resistance to change constitute the fundamental characteristics of the social impression, which is the genesis of our sympathy for some people.
With this speed and intuition we are exposed to being categorized every time we meet new people in the different environments in which we operate on a daily basis. Do strangers tend to like you or dislike you? The answer to this question lies not in the critical and rational thinking of the people you meet for the first time, but in unconscious mechanisms which we will explain below.
Discovering the thinking mechanisms associated with first impressions
The impression emerges from social interaction and begins with the first contact with the person In this first contact, an assessment occurs in which, based on observable information, we infer unobservable traits. This assessment will condition future interactions and the relationship between the subjects.
Performed emotionally and intuitively, the global impressions we form of other people are dominated by stereotypes and idiosyncratic personal constructs. Research indicates that when forming impressions of other people we consider components and then average them in complex ways, or that certain components can influence the interpretation and meaning of all other components and dominate the resulting impression. We tend to remember individuals in terms of their traits, but also in terms of his behavior and appearance. They can be stored as individual people: Paco, María, Antonio; or as members of a social category: the indiehe hipster, the athlete, etc. We like some better, and others worse, according to multiple variables that interact with our beliefs, prejudices and preferences.
The impression is produced when the perceiver “organizes” the information he receives from the perceived person. The result of the process is a global, coherent image of the perceived person: the first impression. From the first impression we decide how we feel and what we will do about a person ; whether we will like it well or badly. If the first impression is negative, we will most likely not try to relate to that person. The first impression has informed us everything we wanted to know and since it is based on the activation of a brain structure not based on reason, it is very resistant to change.
Biases involved in impressions
As we said before, impressions are characterized by their lack of rationality and their brevity of formation, which means that heuristics and cognitive biases are very decisive in their creation.
They play an essential role in explaining why we like someone, or dislike them, without knowing exactly the reason why this is so.
It consists of valuing people based on their group of belonging. The assessment will depend on the identity schemes and categories that the observer has. If the group membership that we attribute to the person has a high value for us, then the evaluation will be positive.
On the other hand, If we pigeonhole him into a group to which we have a negative attitude, our first impression will be decisive This bias is the result of representativeness heuristic
2. Halo Effect
It is a frequent bias of human perception, which consists of evaluating people based on an outstanding trait, positive or negative, and generalizing from that first impression towards characteristics that the person may not present, that is, associate positive characteristics with other equally positive ones We take one or two positive characteristics and only because of it, other equally positive ones are assumed or vice versa. For example, because they have a product as great and innovative as the iPad, every product we see from Apple we assume is good and innovative.
Positive traits are generalized to a brand for a single product that presents an outstanding trait The same goes for attractive people. For the sole observable fact of being beautiful, they are attributed traits of intelligence, health and economic well-being that we have no proof that they present, but this bias tells us that beauty is good, healthy, has money and is influential.
3. Mere exposure effect
The mere repeated exposure of a subject to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the positive attitude to increase towards this stimulus. This leads to a positive evaluation of familiar people or things that do not have any negative emotion or prejudice associated with them.
For example, we can remember the typical song that at first you don’t like but then with each exposure you like it more.
4. Perceptual defense
It is based on the delayed recognition of threatening stimuli or information, that is, what I don’t want to see. The well-known phrase “love is blind” is explained by this bias. When we like someone at first or are in love with them, we can rarely see their flaws while they are obvious to the rest of our friends and family.
Quick recognition of stimuli and information that may benefit our interests If we meet someone who practices the same sport as us, he is a fan of our favorite series, has the same studies or any other mutual similarity, he will stand out from the rest when we meet him in the hallways.
6. Mood
The mood we have at the moment always influences the impressions we make We may meet someone wonderful, but if at that moment we find ourselves deeply angry or sad, the laws of affective infusion tell us that we will take away a negative impression of that person.
Being liked is in your hands if you know the keys to first impressions
I would like to make you aware of an infallible system to avoid falling into these biases and thus form an impression of someone for what they really are, and not for what the human being is capable of making mistakes when the system 1 of thought is active.
However, We are all human and we will fall prey to these biases to a greater or lesser extent due to the human condition So for first impressions, the best antidote is to know the existence of these biases and know which of them is acting on our first impression. On the other hand, you can use these biases to your advantage to make a good impression. If you know the interests and tastes of the person you want to make a good impression on, the halo effect and perceptual accentuation, among others, can work in your favor.
After all, Remember that there are no second chances when it comes to making first impressions
