Everyone knows first impressions are crucial. What most people might not realize is just how short the window is to make one.
That’s all the time you get from meeting a stranger to them deciding if you are someone worthy of their time and attention.
When people first meet you, they create an instant mental snapshot based on your appearance and mannerisms. This becomes the basis for how they deal with you moving forward.
According to a UCLA study conducted by psychologist Albert Mehrabian, body language and vocal tonality account for 93% of how we form first impressions. What we say only accounts for a paltry 7%. However, this formula is not absolute. We cannot extrapolate these percentages to all social situations.
Most of the time, our personalities are evident through body language. How we move, our posture, all this radiates automatically with little thought on our part.
Add to this that we live in a fast-paced world that constantly bombards us with information. Everywhere we look, something or someone is vying for our attention. We are conditioned to make quick judgments just to keep up and make sense of the world. How we present ourselves when socializing with new people is now more important than it has ever been.
Here are the top 3 ways you can make a great first impression. While numbered, it’s not in any order of importance.
1. Smile
Smile more; is a statement you often hear being touted by communication experts and for good reasons. Besides benefiting the individual by boosting happiness and reducing blood pressure, smiling makes you approachable and puts others at ease. It also makes you look more attractive.
A study on cognition and emotion conducted by Golle, Mast & Lobmaier, discovered smiling faces were perceived to be happier and attractive for both genders. Even a less attractive face received a boost in attractiveness purely from having them smile.
Have you ever noticed the plastered smile of a shopping assistant when you enter the store or the nervous smile a child gives to a parental figure when they know they have done something wrong? Smiles come in many forms. Research conducted by a French doctor Duchenne de Boulogne, a pioneer of neurology, discovered there are 19 different smiles, and only 6 are for happiness.
People smile for a host of reasons, including but not limited to fear, flirting, embarrassment or anger. One study has shown people are highly perceptive at reading smiles in social conditions. They accurately identified what types of smiles they witnessed when presented with different smiling faces.
All smiles elicit different phycological effects on people. The best type of smile that gives the best positive initial impression is the slow wide smile.
People find it more credible compared to a fast smile which can appear to be less personal. People want to feel special and that your attention is wholly focused on them.
When you first meet someone, take a moment to soak in their persona before slowly giving a nice wild smile. That slight delay before smiling is what makes it feel like the smile is specifically meant for them.
It helps if your smile is genuine, and you truly mean it. An authentic, happy smile is often referred to as the Duchenne smile.
This type of smile involves the contraction of the cheekbone muscles, which raises the corners of the mouth, including the contraction of the corners of the eyes as it expands. A non-Duchenne smile appears only in the mouth; it’s what most people would recognize as a polite fake smile.
2. Eye Contact
Our eyes are the most important sensory organ we have. We have evolved as species to perceive our environment primarily through sight. Like all primates, we are highly efficient at manipulating and absorbing visual information.
William Shakespeare once said:
“The eyes are the window to the soul”
They are often the first thing we notice about a person. It’s through the eyes that we express emotions like sympathy or adoration; all without ever uttering a single word.
The prevailing wisdom is to “maintain good eye contact”. But there is more to it than just locking eyes with a person when interacting. For starters, intense eyes contact can be uncomfortable for people who are insecure or apprehensive. Even in some cultures, intense eye contact can be seen as disrespectful or at worst, a threatening gesture.
Therefore, it helps to be culturally sensitive when implementing intense eye contact. In western societies, strong eye contact is seen as beneficial, especially if it’s between men and women. Researchers Kellerman, Lewis, and Laird conducted a study to explore the effects of eye contact on romantic interest. They discovered men and women who maintained intense eye contact with the opposite gender had higher levels of respect and admiration.
Another study found we are more likely to remember a face after experiencing a mutual gaze, and displays of anger are deemed to be more intense when accompanied by direct eye contact. People find eye contact important to such an extent we think of people who avoid our gaze to be less sincere and conscientious. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean you have to go around staring down every new person you meet; there are limits.
Psychologist Alan Johnson and his colleagues at University College London collected data from more than 400 volunteers. The aim was to find the subjects’ comfort level when presented with video clips of actors staring at them for varying lengths of time. Johnson and his colleagues found the average eye contact length people were comfortable with is 3.2 seconds. However, the volunteers were comfortable with a longer duration if the person staring looked more trustworthy.
3. Confident Body Language
Confident people have an aura of assurance that screams this person is a winner in life. They strut around with their head held up high, shoulders back with a smile on their face. There is no doubt about it, having good posture and demeanor tells the world you are someone worth knowing.
A speed dating study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found people with open body language: sitting straight up, relaxed with open arms generated more second dates compared to those who hunched over with crossed arms. Similar results were observed when it came to online dating profile pictures. According to the researchers, having a good posture signaled confidence and approachability.
It seems all that stern talk from our mothers and teachers telling us to “stop slouching!” and “stand up straight!” has merit after all.
Use All Three to Build an Instant Connection
When it comes to making good first impressions, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. By implementing all three in synergy, we can achieve more.
When you first meet someone new, offer them a warm smile, position your body language so that it’s facing them, maintain a good posture so no slouching or fidgeting, you want to keep an open body language while focusing your attention on them. Remember, everyone inherently wants to be recognized and made to feel special.
Maintain eye contact but not too long, but it should be at least 3 to 4 seconds in length. When they speak you can maintain a longer gaze as it shows you are taking an interest in what they have to say. When you do look away, do so reluctantly. Only avert your gaze momentarily before reengaging eye contact.
An effective trick to help smoothen things when meeting a stranger is to pretend they are a long-lost friend. Imagine how it feels to reunite after a long absence. You feel joy and a genuine interest to reconnect. Your entire demeanor changes the moment you set eyes on your friend. Once the conversation gets going, you listen attentively, and you respond with enthusiasm and curiosity.
The reason why imagining you are meeting a stranger is so effective is two-pronged. Firstly, faking it’ creates a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you act like you like someone, you will inevitably end up liking them for real. They found this to be the case in a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Volunteers were told to treat subjects as if they liked them, regardless of how they felt. When the researchers questioned the subjects, they discovered volunteers who pretended to like them were rated more favorably. And subjects who believed they were liked were more open and intimate in conversation. Though it should be noted, the reverse was true if the volunteers acted as if they disliked them.
The second reason for faking it till you make it has to do with your mental conditioning. When socializing, a lot is said through body language alone. Keeping track of all your non-verbal communication cues can become exhausting. And for many people, nervousness and anxiety are real issues they experience when meeting new people. Acting like we are talking to a familiar friend helps alleviate some of these issues.
Closing Thoughts
Meeting new people will always be necessary, whether for work, forging new friends, or cultivating romantic relationships. While it might feel people are slowly losing the ability to socialize in the real world because of the pervasive power of social media. And how as time goes by, every aspect of our lives that requires human-to-human interaction will soon be managed by computers.
We still need to go out to forge social ties even if staying home perusing social media feels more convenient. When we go out into the real world, knowing how to communicate effectively can make all the difference. By recognizing the pivotal role your posture/demeanor, eye contact, and smiling play in all your interactions, you equip yourself with the necessary knowledge to present yourself in the best possible way.
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Previously Published on medium
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