It's all over in 30 seconds.
The interview may last all day, the party a few hours, the date a seeming lifetime. But in the first 30 seconds, you win the job, make the friend, or scuttle the hoped-for romance.
It happens that fast. And you've barely uttered a word a researcher says.
"I couldn't care less what people say,'' said Frank J. Bernieri, the University of Toledo psychology professor whose research team found that it's all-but-over after the handshake. "I'm interested in what takes place instantaneously, reflexively, subconsciously, and immediately.''
In the 30 seconds when we introduce ourselves, words are of little consequence. What makes the lasting impression are the silent signals, the facial expressions, the cut of the suit, and the beauty of the speaker.
Tricia J. Prickett, one of Dr. Bernieri's students, made the case when she showed people video clips of job applicants meeting interviewers. Each clip was between 20 seconds and 32 seconds.
Dr. Bernieri's research group had just completed a study in which interviewers were trained to evaluate job applicants. They conducted 59 20-minute interviews. Each interview was videotaped. After each session, interviewers completed a four-page evaluation of the applicant.
Ms. Prickett edited the tapes to the brief minute of exchanged greetings and seat taking. There was no time for even one question.
Twenty untrained evaluators saw the mini-clips and rated the interview subjects on a dozen attributes such as likability, self-assurance, and competence.
The surprise: their grades closely followed the ratings given by the trained interviewers who conducted much longer encounters.
"People do judge books by their covers,'' Dr. Bernieri concludes. "First impressions are going to predict final impressions.''
People who make a living interviewing don't buy it.
"Sometimes what you see in the very beginning is not the true person,'' said Carole Martin, a human resources professional with a career built around interviewing. Ms. Martin is the interview expert on the Monster.com job-seekers' web site and a principal in the web site www.interviewcoach.com.
John Adams, owner of the Dale Carnegie franchise in northwest Ohio, northern Indiana, and Michigan, says it may be the interviewer who's at fault if the first impression is a bad one.
"I've made many mistakes in my life making quick judgments on people,'' Mr. Adams said. "Once I get to know someone, I think, what's the matter with me? To me, the problem is the interviewer, not the interviewee.''
"I don't think you can underestimate the effect of the first impression,'' said Jeff Lemke, owner of the local Express Personnel Services, a employee recruitment company. "We try to be aware of it. I think we've all, at times, let it affect us too much. But in our line of work, you have to move beyond first impressions.''
But Dr. Bernieri says his research results and the conclusions of many earlier studies throw the whole notion of interviews up for grabs.
"Probably the best way to conduct a job interview is not to conduct a job interview. You go by resume and past experience and references,'' he said. "If anything, the interview is going to make you attend to irrelevant criteria or potentially irrelevant criteria.''
Dr. Bernieri said the interpersonal skills showcased in a job interview might be crucial for some professions - such as leadership roles or sales. But if the job is technical, "whether you like the person is going to throw you.''
The effect of those first impressions compounds over time.
"You hire the warm fuzzy person who's doing a horrible job. But what's the consequence of that? You still like that person. So you're happy with the hire even though they're ineffective. You're confident you've made the right decision even though your revenues are going down.''
Sound unlikely? Research shows we're pretty stubborn about giving up our snap judgments.
"In social psychology, there is an amazing amount of literature and research that show once we have any expectation, once we have any working theory, any working hypothesis, we are biased in the way we process information,'' he said. "We go out of our way to seek confirming evidence.''
Our notions induce us to ignore information that contradicts them and interpret ambiguous information so that it supports our idea.
"If we think someone is nice, we go out of our way to look for the possible place where we can find that person being nice. So it's a biased search for information,'' he said.
It works on our memory too, allowing us to forget things that don't fit our theory and remember only the supporting evidence.
We even change our behavior in ways that elicit responses that confirm our initial supposition. For instance, if you think someone is smart, you may raise the level of conversation around her. If you think someone is nice, you're nicer to him, and you tend to get niceness back.
"All of these processes work to sort of make us cling to those initial beliefs. However, in our minds, we think we're being analytical and processing the whole time. So by the time we finish, we think our judgments are based on the data. Of course, we got stuck. Our judgments were anchored to the very first judgment.''
And first judgments become final judgments.
So what is it we're focusing on in these crucial but fleeting meetings?
First in all of our evaluations is beauty, Dr. Bernieri says. Research shows good-looking people fare best. So prevalent is this outlook, social scientists even have a name for it. They call it the "What is Beautiful is Good" phenomena.
"Pretty people are seen as more intelligent, as having better personalities. They're seen as more trustworthy. We perceive them as being happier people, more successful people, more competent. On almost every possible dimension, a pretty person is seen as better.''
Second, we like expressive people.
"People whose faces are animated, whose vocal patterns vary. If you are an easy read, if someone looks at you and thinks that they're seeing right into you, then they tend to like you. If you have a poker face, if you're reserved, then you're a more difficult read. Then people seem not to like that.''
Finally, a very subtle dance takes place with every conversation. Whether we subconsciously catch its rhythm adds greatly to the impression we make. It's a particular focus of Dr. Bernieri's research, and it's called "interaction synchrony.''
He turns on a videotape he made early in his career. Each scene shows two strangers talking. When the people in the tape have similar postures and gestures or move in a sort of unconscious choreography, they told evaluators afterward that they had wonderful conversations. People who failed to mirror postures or subtly coordinate movements reported the conversations as dull or unsatisfactory.
This synchrony is so basic to us, day-old infants will synchronize with their mothers.
"I want to make a point that it's not mimicking. There's a tempo,'' Dr. Bernieri said. "I've found in almost every case that synchrony starts immediately. It's not something that you think about.
"People who always feel uncoordinated and don't like social interactions, I would bet lots of money that they're probably poor synchronizers. People who love other people, I'm guessing they're probably expressive, charismatic, and this expressivity and charisma makes it easier for someone to be sucked in, to coordinate, to synchronize.''
One small way to improve a first impression - especially for women - is a good, firm handshake, said Bill Chaplin a psychology professor at the University of Alabama, who studied the effect of handshakes.
"In particular, we found, first of all, men in general gave better - that is, firmer -handshakes that made a better impression. But that women who gave a firm handshake - that fit a more masculine stereotype handshake - made at least as good as an impression as men did.''
In particular, women with a firm handshake were judged more open to new experiences and new roles - just the kind of thing an interviewer might desire. Men received no extra points on this score no matter their handshake.
But Dr. Chaplin cautions that the handshake is only a small slice of a first impression.
"Obviously, what Frank [Bernieri's] study showed us is that once formed, these first impressions are really powerful,'' he said.
Today, Ms. Pricket, the undergraduate who developed the first-impression study, works in human resources. Although she hasn't done many interviews yet, her research has an effect on those she has conducted.
"A lot can be told in 15 seconds,'' she said. "And that can also make the employer look bad.''
First Published January 10, 2013, 7:14 p.m.
