subject: First Impressions Are Not What We Think [print this page] They say that first impressions last, but how accurate are they really? Are they all they're made out to be? For example, is it actually possible to fall in love with someone at first sight?
Well the truth is more surprising than you think...
A study by academics at the departments of psychology of the University of New York and the University of Harvard revealed that certain parts of the brain (the amygdala and the posterior cingulate cortex to be precise) light up when we meet people for the first time. Not only that, they light up more when our ideas about that person that fit into a consistent framework. In other words, our brains are wired in such a way as to prefer consistency when we are forming impressions about people. I.e. we are deploying a filter early on; we are starting to sacrifice anything that may appear paradoxical or inconsistent, in order to draw a coherent judgment.
That then takes us to the world of psychotherapy and the more recent genre of the self help website. To understand this further, to my mind, we have to go to the bookshelf and brush off the cobwebs from the likes of Freud and Jung. While some of the findings of early psychoanalysis have been more controversial than others, some have certainly stood the test of time. The description of one of our most fundamental defence mechanisms - projection - is one of them.
As I teach within the Sileotherapy self help website; we all possess within us numerous traits and aspects that we find hard to carry. This occurs whenever the trait evokes a sufficiently strong feeling within us - in a positive or negative way. Whenever the feeling crosses a certain threshold of intensity, it becomes too difficult to carry inside, so we throw it out onto someone else and carry round the feeling as if it's about them instead. It's a lot easier to carry that way. Strong feelings of love and hate, anger or attraction, usually have some roots in this process.
This study, very interestingly, seems to verify anatomically, the existence of this phenomenon. When we first meet people, the truth is, we know very little about them and - with few exceptions - it will take at least several more encounters before we can form anything close to a fair picture. Nevertheless, on day one, we seem to be in the business of conjuring an image that already feels consistent and so, in some way, complete. How is this possible? it must be projection - our old friend - coming into play. The consistent impressions we are filtering through must, in some way, be facilitating our own projection needs.
Basically, we are filling in the blank canvas before us with our own inner colouring pencils.
