The 6 psychological keys to being liked by others

Oscar Wilde once said that "there is never a second chance to make a good first impression" and he was right. And it is that this to be liked by others begins with a furtive glance, and our unconscious dictates sentence.

How to make a good impression to be liked by others?

The social psychologist John Bargh of Yale University, concluded in his investigations that Our brain it only takes two tenths of a second to make the first impression. Later the information was expanded and thanks to neuroimaging techniques it was shown that this first impression comes from the limbic system, which is the brain system in charge of emotional management, and more specifically, the amygdala.

In this short process we sentence people: if they have made a good impression on us, it will be easier for us to be predisposed to establish a relationship with them. If they have made a bad impression on us... they will have it much more complicated.

The key is in the first impression

In fact, rationality is far from being a participant in the process of impression formation

and it is more of an emotional and unconscious process. Therefore, the speed of formation, the emotionality and the resistance to change constitute the fundamental characteristics of social impression, which is the genesis of our sympathy for some people.

With this speed and intuition we are exposed to being categorized every time we meet new people in the different environments in which we operate on a day-to-day basis. Do strangers tend to like you or not? The answer to this question is not in the critical and rational thinking of people you meet for the first time, but in unconscious mechanisms which we will explain below.

• More information: "10 tips to make a good first impression"

Discovering the thinking mechanisms associated with first impressions

The impression emerges from social interaction and begins with the first contact with the person. In this first contact, an assessment is produced in which, from observable information, we infer unobservable traits. This assessment will condition future interactions and the relationship between the subjects.

When performed emotionally and intuitively, the overall impressions we form of other people are dominated by stereotypes and idiosyncratic personal constructs. Research indicates that in forming impressions of other people we consider the components and then average them in different ways. complex, or that certain components may influence the interpretation and meaning of all other components and dominate the impression resulting. We tend to remember individuals in terms of their traits, but also in terms of their demeanor and appearance. They can be stored as individual people: Paco, María, Antonio; or as members of a social category: the indie, the hipster, the athlete, etc. Some of us like us better, and others worse, according to multiple variables that interact with our beliefs, prejudices and preferences.

The impression is produced when the perceiver "organizes" the information he receives from the perceived person. The result of the process is a global, coherent image of the perceived person: the first impression. From the first impression we decide how we feel and what we will do about a person; if we will like us or not. If the first impression is negative, it is most likely that we will not try to relate to that person. The first impression has informed us of everything we wanted to know and as this is based on the activation of a brain structure not based on reason, it is very resistant to change.

Biases involved in impressions

As we said before, the impressions are characterized by their lack of rationality and their shortness of formation, which means that the heuristic pathways and the cognitive biases they are very decisive in their creation.

They play an essential role in explaining why we like someone, or badly, without knowing exactly why this is so.

1. Perceptual accentuation

It consists of the valuation of the people according to their group of belonging. The valuation will depend on the schemes and categories identity that the observer has. If the group of belonging that we attribute to the person has a high value for us, then the evaluation will be positive.

On the other hand, if we pigeonhole him in a group to which we have a negative attitude, our first impression will be decisive. This bias is the result of representativeness heuristic

2. Halo effect

It is a frequent bias of human perception, which consists in evaluating people based on an outstanding, positive trait or negative, and generalize from that first impression to characteristics that the person may not have, that is, associate positive characteristics with other equally positive ones. We take one or two positive characteristics and only for it, other equally positive ones are assumed or vice versa. For example, having such a cool and innovative product as the iPad, every Apple product we see we assume is good and innovative.

Positive traits are generalized to a brand for a single product that presents an outstanding trait. The same goes for attractive people. For the only observable fact of being beautiful, they are attributed traits of intelligence, health and economic well-being that do not we have evidence that they present them, but this bias tells us that what is beautiful is good, healthy, has money and is influential.

3. Effect of mere exposure

The mere repeated exposure of a subject to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the positive attitude to increase towards this stimulus. This leads to a positive appraisal of familiar people or things that do not have any associated negative emotions or prejudices.

For example, we can remember the typical song that at first you do not like but then with each exhibition you like it more.

4. Perceptual defense

It is based on the delayed recognition of threatening stimuli or information, that is, what I don't want to see. The well-known phrase "love is blind" is explained by this bias. When we first like someone or are in love with them, we can seldom see their flaws while they are obvious to the rest of our friends and family.

5. Perceptual insight

Quick recognition of stimuli and information that can benefit our interests. If we know someone who plays the same sport as us, he is a fan of our favorite series, he has the same studies or any other mutual similarity, will stand out among the others when we meet him by the hallways.

6. Mood

The mood we have at the moment always influences the impressions we make. We may know someone wonderful but if at that moment we find ourselves deeply angry or sad, the laws of affective infusion tell us that we will take an impression of that person negative.

Falling well is in your hand if you know the keys to first impressions

I would like to introduce you to an infallible system so as not to fall into these biases and thus form a someone's impression for what he really is, and not for what the human being is capable of erring when the thought system 1 is active.

However, we are all human and we will fall prey to these biases to a greater or lesser extent by human condition. So for first impressions, the best antidote is to know the existence of these biases and to know which of them is acting on our first impression. On the other hand, you can use these biases to your advantage to make a good impression. If you know the interests and tastes of the person you want to make a good impression on, the halo effect and perceptual accentuation, among others, can work in your favor.

After all, remember there are no second chances when it comes to making first impressions.