impressions
The power of perception, particularly in relationships, is strong, and
it all begins with an initial impression. Think back to who you were
when you met your partner. Are you exactly the same person you are
now with them? Did you maintain a consistent impression between
your partner, your friends, and your parents, or were you attempting
to seem a bit more impressive, a bit more charming, and a bit more
suave? Many times, particularly in the beginning of relationships,
much of what we say, what we oh-so-carefully choose to wear, even
how much we eat, may be a strategy deployed to subtly influence
what the person sitting across the table thinks of us. And when it
comes to impression management, there are quite few strategies
that we tend to use: Ingratiation, or, doing favours and being open
with our compliments so that others can like us. Or, have you ever
met someone who went on and on about all of his or her accomplishments and treated a conversation as if it were the long answer
to the interview question, 'what is your biggest achievement'? Selfpromotion, when it comes to wanting to leave a powerful impression, is one of the most deployed strategies; we display our accomplishments to others in order to elicit their respect. Being overly
aggressive or intimidating is another way that we can impress upon
others that we are 'tough', or playing the damsel in distress can help
us receive nurture from others.
Did you carefully deploy some of the strategies above, or were
you completely at ease with yourself? If we've carefully planned out
the impression that we would like to leave on another person, we
may be what psychologists would refer to as 'high self-monitors':
Individuals who pay very close attention to the environment around
them, and change their behavior to fit in. Conversely, low self-monitors tend to make the same impression regardless of the environment they're in. While there are cultural differences to high and low
self-monitoring, in Western society, high self-monitors are generally social butterflies, who have many friends with diverse occupations and interests. However, because a high self-monitors must
consistently be monitoring his or her impression, and because it
tends to be so cognitively taxing, high self-monitors tend to spend
less time in their relationships, and thus have shorter relationships
than low self-monitors, who are happy to be themselves, regardless
of the situation at hand.
perceptions
Whether we closely monitor the impressions we aim to leave on
others, or are ourselves in every scenario, this is only one half of the
equation. Being on the receiving end of a first impression is equally
important, and the way you perceive your partner can very much
influence the future of your relationship, if you decide to purse a
relationship at all! The idea of receiving a first impression, called
the primacy effect, suggests that the initial information we learn
about someone influences how we interpret all of the later information we receive from them. For instance, let’s say you were set
up on a blind date to meet Greg in a coffee shop. You enter right
on time, and notice Greg sitting by himself with an empty cup of
coffee. You greet him with a smile, but he refuses to stand up or
even shake your hand. You are completely thrown off, and immediately, your perception of Greg is that he isn’t particularly warm, he
doesn’t seem to be very open, and clearly doesn’t like you very much.
While Greg texts you a few days later asking if you’d like to go out
on a second date, you decline, figuring a person who is so rude is not
someone who warrants a second date. What you may not know is
that a few moments before you entered the coffee shop, the barista
spilled scorching hot coffee on Greg, spilling all over his pants. In
order to avoid the embarrassment, he refused to stand up when
you walked in. A high self-monitor, Greg was trying to manage
his own impression on you and didn’t tell you what happened so
that you wouldn’t perceive of him as clumsy. Now, say, a few weeks
later, you are invited to attend a party, where you see Greg, who
is the centre of attention and extremely affectionate towards you.
Because of your initial impression of him, you believe in your initial
perception of him - a psychological bias we are all, unfortunately,
privy to - and best chalk up Greg’s jovial behavior to assuming he
has had too much to drink, when, in fact, he is only being himself.
One way of getting around this erroneous way of thinking, particularly when it comes to our relationships, is to give our partners is a
second chance, and confront our judgments of them and try to find
contradictory evidence to our initial beliefs.
The idea of how we view evidence is called the attribution the