Two studies presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Austin, Texas revealed that two horribly shallow things about people are true: they can never let go of a first impression and that they can “accurately” judge a book by its cover—whatever that means.
“Despite the well-known idiom to ‘not judge a book by its cover,’ the present research shows that such judgments about the cover are good proxies for judgments about the book — even after reading it,” Vivian Zayas, a psychologist at Cornell University, said.
Zayas had subjects look at photos of people and then rate how much they would get along with them. A month later the subjects would interact with these people and then reassess how compatible they were. The results were the same for the most part. However, one has to wonder how much of that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you expect that you won’t get along with someone, judge them by their looks or are dismissive of them, you’re probably preemptively sabotaging that relationship. If you expect that you’ll get along with them or want to, you’ll make the effort.
Another methodology they used was testing people’s “gaydar,” which is supposedly a real thing. Studies show that people can determine someone’s sexuality with a 65% accuracy by looking at their face. The premise of “gaydar” feels a bit trite considering all the cultural stereotypes and signifiers we use to determine someone’s sexuality. I mean just a few decades ago a woman who wore pants would have been classified as a lesbian.
According to Live Science, “People who saw the faces for only a 20th of a second were more likely to go with their gut feeling on the person’s sexuality — meaning they were likely to guess the person’s real orientation instead of what the false labels said.” Crazy. I guess in nature it’s a necessary skill when seeking potential partners?
However Live Science does acknowledge that there is room for our judgments directing our attitudes and behaviors toward one another, “Other research has found that teachers who are introduced to certain students with assurances that these children will bloom by the end of the year focus more attention on those kids, essentially creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teachers also prefer students who are more attractive, and attractiveness predicts success in life.”
[Shutterstock/Andresr]
