A recent study conducted by researchers in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University in the United States revealed that delaying judgment on things until after waking up helps us avoid falling into the trap of judging things on first impression.
The research team, published September 3 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, began with an age-old question: Is it better to judge enthusiastically after making a good first impression, or to defer judgment?
Which box will you sell?
To answer this question, researchers conducted a study that involved a fictional garage sale. In a series of online experiments, researchers asked participants to look through virtual boxes of unwanted items to choose which ones they would like to sell from their imaginary garage.
Most of the items placed inside each box were not of great value, such as an old alarm clock or a potted plant. But there were some different things like a beautiful lamp or a teddy bear that were more valuable.
Participants received real money based on the boxes they chose to sell, which prompted them to try to figure out which boxes were the most valuable.
Conventional wisdom says that people are easily seduced by first impressions, and there is strong scientific evidence that initial snap judgments are difficult to change, even if they turn out to be inaccurate. So what did this scientific experiment reveal?
First impression trap
Participants did not know that the total value of the 20 items in each box was the same for all boxes. The differences were only in the ranking of less important versus “precious” objects.
In some of the boxes, all the valuables were at the top, so when participants opened the boxes they saw these items first. In other boxes, valuable items were grouped in the middle or at the bottom, and in some boxes they were mixed up.
After opening the boxes, the researchers asked participants to estimate the value of each box and choose their favorite box. Some participants made their judgment immediately, while others waited until the next day to make their decision.
A pattern quickly emerged: When participants had to make an immediate decision, they tended to remember and evaluate the boxes based on the first things they saw.
“We found that people are strongly influenced by first impressions,” said lead author Allie Sinclair, who conducted the research as part of her doctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Alison Adcock, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University.
Almost every time, participants chose the boxes with the valuable items at the top. When they saw these “treasures” first before the cheap items, they were more likely to choose that box compared to if they had seen the cheap items first.
Not only did participants prefer funds that gave an impressive impression, but they also tended to overestimate their value, guessing that they were worth 10% more than they actually were.
Initial bias
This is an example of a psychological phenomenon known as priming bias, according to Sinclair, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.
When it comes to forming a public opinion about something, we seem to be overly influenced by the first information that comes to light, even when new facts emerge.
In the case of the garage sale experiment, this bias prevented participants from comparing boxes rationally, and even led them to believe that some boxes were more valuable than they actually were. At the same time, ironically, they were less able to remember precise details when asked about the valuables in their favorite boxes.
Sleep effect
However, participants who were not asked to make a decision until the next day were less likely to fall into these traps.
“They made more rational decisions, and equally preferred boxes that contained groups of valuable items at the beginning, middle or end,” Sinclair said.
Participants who “slept on it” no longer preferred boxes that made an overwhelmingly good first impression. The boxes that saved the best items for last had equal weight in their mental calculations.
“Judging first impressions may be good for spur-of-the-moment choices,” Adcock said. Whether you’re watching the opening scene of a movie or flipping through the first pages of a book, quick judgments based on these initial impressions can help you decide whether to proceed before you invest too much time and effort.
But when it comes to situations of long-term importance, such as returning to a restaurant, employment or social relationships, Sinclair says, “There is wisdom in the idea of ’sleeping on it’ before making a decision.”
Adcock added: “This is an exciting first look at how our brains summarize a pleasant experience. When the experience is over, the brain arranges them all in memory to help us make better decisions, and this trick happens during the night.”