Recently a study was conducted at Ohio State University about first impressions and how they affected college students. 164 Students at OSU were paired up and instructed to talk with each other. After 3, 6 or 10 minutes of talking, students were given a survey that asked them to predict what kind of relationship they would have with that person. When the semester was done, the students were then given another survey and the ones who rated each other favorably at the beginning ended up forming a study group together. What was surprising about the study was the huge effect that negative first impressions had. Classmates who rated the person they were paired up unfavorably avoided talking to the other partner all semester.
First impressions are especially important for college students. You don’t want to give a bad first impression to your roommate when you move into the dorm, you don’t want to show up late to your first day of work or a job interview, you don’t want to look like a messy slob when meeting people in class for the first day when everyone is trying to form study groups, and you certainly do not want to show up late to a professor’s office hours (sorry Professor Housefield). What someone decides about you in the first few minutes determines the type of relationship you’ll have with them.
The Society of Human Resources Management did a study and discovered that 63% of hiring decisions are made within the first 4.3 minutes of a job interview. The rest of the time is spent deciding whether the first impression was correct.
What’s my point in telling you all of this?
First impressions matter.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=69942&page=1
http://www.cvonline.com/content/?id=208&gr=1
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/1stimpre.htm
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