Human beings have evolved an incredible ability to form first impressions, quickly and with a high degree of accuracy, as a survival mechanism. Of course, it is still difficult to know whether to trust first impressions, as there are so many warnings. We're told how important it is to make a first impression on a first date, a job interview, or meeting a new client. We are also advised to never judge a book by its cover, which indicates that our first impression might be wrong and suggests that the first impression is formed from appearance alone. Instead, I suggest that human beings are unconsciously skilled at making first impressions by quickly assimilating information about visual, environmental, and behavioral cues and comparing these cues with their own knowledge and experiences to create meaning. The first impression exercise provides a brief paragraph describing behaviors. and the environment of two Johns, extroverted John and introverted John (Clark, 1998). After reading each paragraph, I quickly documented my first impression of the John described in each paragraph. I described extroverted John as happy, energetic, whole, successful, and lucky. I described introverted John as depressed, slow, unhappy, unsuccessful, alcoholic, lonely, and hostile. To determine the factors that contributed to my perception, I reread each paragraph and made several observations, the main one being that the paragraphs primarily described behaviors. The paragraphs also described the environment but did not describe John at all. So what did John's behaviors suggest? An extrovert, John walked on the sunny side of the street, suggesting he was happy and energetic. He also took middle of paper......red as a whole and they can be very resistant to change. Research leads me to believe that we should trust our intuition while making a conscious effort to regularly challenge our preconceptions…just in case. Works Cited Ambady, Naline and Rosenthal, Robert. (1993). Half a minute: Predicting teacher ratings from thin slices of nonverbal behavior and physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(3), 431-441.Clark, Don. (1997, 04/18/2010). Leadership and Human Behavior Retrieved 03/19/2011, 2011, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadhb.htmlClark, Don. (1998, 08/18/2010). First Impressions Retrieved 03/19/2011, 2011, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/impress.htmlSmith, Eliot R. and Mackie, Diane M. (2007). Perceive individuals. Social psychology (3rd ed., pp. 57-93). Hove: Psychology Press.