- 分享到:
Have you ever met someone for the first time and formed a quick impression based only on a quick “snapshot” of information? As children, we were told that we should not judge a book by its cover, that things are not always what they seem, that surface appearances are deceptive, and that all that glitters is not gold. Yet as adults we can’t seem to help ourselves. To illustrate the rapid-fire nature of the process, Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov (2006) showed college students photographs of unfamiliar faces for one-tenth of a second, half a second , or a full second. Whether the students judged the faces for how attractive, likable, competent, trustworthy, or aggressive they were, their ratings-even at the briefest exposure-limits. Flip quickly through the pages of an illustrated magazine, and you may see for yourself that it takes a mere fraction of a second to form an impression of a stranger from his or her face. If first impressions are quick to form, on what are they based? In 500 BC, the mathematician Pythagoras looked into the eyes of prospective students to determine if they were gifted. At about the same time, Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, used facial features to make diagnoses of life and death. In the 19th century, Viennese physician Franz Gall introduced a carnival-like science called phrenology and claimed that he could assess people’s character by the shape of their skulls. And in 1954, psychologist William Sheldon conclude from flawed studies of adult men that there is a strong link between physique and personality. People may not measure each other by bumps on the head, as phrenologists used to do, but first impression are influenced in subtle ways by a person’s height, weight, skin color, hair color, tattoos, piercings, eyeglasses, and other aspects of physical appearance. As social perceivers, we also form impressions of people that are of often accurately based on a host of indirect telltale cues. In Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, Sam Gosling describes research he has conducted showing that people’s personalities can be revealed in the knicked-knacks found in their offices and dormitory rooms, the identity claims they make on Facebook pages, the books that line their shelves, and the types of music that inhabit their iPods. In one study, fictional characters with “old-generation” names such as Kevin, Michael, Lisa, and Michelle. In another study, both men and women were seen as more feminine when they spoke in high-pitched voices than in lower-pitched voices. The human face in particular attracts more than its share of attention. Since the time of ancient Greece, human beings have attended to physiognomy-the art of reading character from faces. Although we may not realize it, this tendency persists today. For example, Ran Hassin and Yaacov Trope(2000) found that people prejudge others in photographs as kind-hearted rather than mean-spirited based on such features as upturned mouth. Interestingly, these researchers also found that just as people read traits from faces, at times they read traits into faces based on prior information. In one study, for example, participants who were told that a man was kind-compared to those told he was mean –later judged his face to be fuller, rounder, and more attractive. In social perception studies of the human face, researchers have found that adults who have baby-faced features-large, round eyes; high eyebrows; round cheeks; a large forehead; smooth skin; and rounded chin-tend to be seen as warm, kind, naïve, weak, honest, and submissive. In contrast, adults who have mature features-small eyes, low brows and a small forehead,wrinkled skin, and an angular chin-are seen as stronger, more dominant, and more competent(Berry
