You’ll know the cliché that “we never get a second chance to make a first impression.” I decided to have a closer look at this premise earlier this week.
I can be, (no, I am) very quick to make up my mind about people and sometimes I can be wrong. I can think someone is going to be a bit dull when they turn out to be a laugh a minute”¦ Or…vice versa. I can think someone will always be in my life and then they just completely disappear. We can be wrong folks!

I am sure that you have heard that an interviewer, or a stranger at a party, will form an impression of you, your character, your personality, the condition of your hair etc all within the first 60 seconds of meeting you.
I find that hard to believe and that is because it isn’t true.
It is actually FAR LESS time than that. A LOT less. It is not even 30 seconds. It is”¦well, wait and see”¦

I am not out to intimidate you, especially if you happen to be preparing for a job or a gig or an interview, (or even a blind date) but this new research shows that you may need to buck your ideas up to judged, quite literally, in the blink of an eye.

That is an incredible piece of news to me. I thought I was forming an impression slightly slower than that!!

Apparently these Princeton psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov conducted separate experiments to study reactions to facial appearance, each focusing on a different trait: attractiveness, likeability, competence, trustworthiness, and aggressiveness.
(I hope they didn’t use any images of me!)

Those in the experiment were shown facial images for 1/10 second, half a second and a full second. Then the response time was measured.
Participants’ judgments were compared with ratings of the same photographs given to another group of participants in a preliminary study, in which there were no time constraints. For all five of the traits studied, judgments made after the briefest exposure (1/10 of a second) were highly correlated with judgments made without time constraints.

Their conclusion was this: “A series of experiments reveal that all it takes is a tenth of a second to form an impression of a stranger from their face, and that longer exposures don’t significantly alter those impressions (although they might boost your confidence in your judgments).
Conclusion being, we don’t take long to judge. Less than one tenth of one second in fact. Does that surprise you?
Think about the last time you got on a train, or a bus. If there are a number of spaces you make a snap decision about where to sit based on WHO you see and what you judge about them, don’t you?

And so do I.

So can we make a second first impression?
Science says no. But of course God says yes. Take Paul for example. He probably didn’t make that great a first impression on the early Church, (unless by impression we mean a stone embedded into the skull.) And yet, they gave him grace to eventually become their LEADER.
I believe we can make amends if we have offended someone or made a bad impression on them. I am living proof. Jon did not impress me on first meeting. I did not impress him either. But look at us now! 12 years later we are happily married and skip round the house like lunatics at times because we are so happy in each other’s company.

Is there someone who you have misjudged? Or who has misjudged you? Pray today that God will give you both grace to make a second, and lasting impression.

(The research quoted above is presented in the article “First Impressions,” in the July issue of Psychological Science.)