The Science of First Impressions

Picture a woman: her hair cascades down her back, and she is clad in a light green button-up. What is your immediate impression of her? Research suggests that it takes only 100 milliseconds for a first impression to form (Willis & Todorov, 2006). First impressions are the near-instant opinions one forms about others or about things one is seeing for the first time.

First impressions are sometimes meaningful as they may be accurate. Ballew and Todorov (2007) conducted an experiment in which participants had to choose the more competent political candidate based on facial appearance. Judgements made after 100ms were relatively accurate, demonstrating that our first impressions can possibly predict election outcomes. However, it is still important to remember that our impressions of others can also reflect our own biases (Over & Cook, 2017). 

First impressions are formed through complex brain and social processes. In the brain, the amygdala may be involved in making social judgements about other people based on their facial expressions (Adolphs et al., 1998). On the social side, someone’s appearance, cadence, etc., can influence the information we extract from the first meeting (Gao et al., 2025). Thankfully, these impressions are not set in stone.

Explicit first impressions can be changed, but implicit evaluations are resistant to change. Implicit first impressions are unintentional and often unconscious (Rydell & McConnell, 2006). Implicit impressions are harder to change because we cannot intentionally activate that evaluation. Fortunately, change is not impossible under the right conditions (Ferguson et al., 2019). 

First impressions are extremely normal–we form an opinion about everything. However, after learning so much about first impressions, you should put this knowledge into practice and be more aware of your first impressions and remain open-minded when interacting with others!

Writer: Ellery

Published: 16/04/2026

References:

Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. (1998). The human amygdala in social judgment. Nature, 393(6684), 470–474. https://doi.org/10.1038/30982

Ballew, C. C., & Todorov, A. (2007). Predicting political elections from rapid and unreflective face judgments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(46), 17948–17953. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705435104

Ferguson, M. J., Mann, T. C., Cone, J., & Shen, X. (2019). When and how implicit first impressions can be updated. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(4), 331–336. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419835206

Gao, S., Li, Q., He, C., Yan, X., & Yin, Y. (2025). Words or appearance? The impact of verbal behaviour and facial attraction on first impression. Biological Psychology, 200, 109107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2025.109107

Over, H., & Cook, R. (2017). Where do spontaneous first impressions of faces come from? Cognition, 170, 190–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.10.002

Rydell, R. J., & McConnell, A. R. (2006). Understanding implicit and explicit attitude change: A systems of reasoning analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(6), 995–1008. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.6.995

Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions. Psychological Science, 17(7), 592–598. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01750.x