The halo effect and the importance of making a good first impression

We always like to like each other. But sometimes, it becomes essential, to make a good impression on someone, to fit in with a group or to like a boss when looking for a job.

There is an influential factor that determines our image in the face of others, related to mental stereotypes and memory, and which is known as the “primacy and recent effect" and the "halo effect”, Linked to the previous.

What is the primacy and recency effect?

It is the effect that occurs when remembering something, depending on the position in which we receive the information. According to this effect, we better remember the first and the last or most recent, and worse the in-between.

For example, if they give us a long list of words:

" ambulance, tree, loudspeaker, pear, fish, light bulb, cloud, watch, scarf, sun, leopard, happiness, meat, wire, yellow, nail, lounge, glass "

We tend to keep the top and last words in our short-term memory more easily. This not only happens with memory exercises, it also happens when we meet people or go to a place for the first time.  We always receive a first impression that marks us and composes our thoughts, either because we associate the impression to something or someone we already know or driven by the sensations received at the time.

The sum of the first sensations received and the last, are fixed in our memory, and from these we mentally adjust the information, creating an image, which may or may not be accurate. This mental composition created from the primacy and recency effect, occurs due to another associated effect, known as “halo effect ".

These effects were tested by Atkinson and Shiffrin, who spoke of retention in the mshort term memory (MCP) and long term (MLP). Both phenomena have an effect on PCM, but the moment we interpose an intermediate activity, the memories that are most fixed in PCM are those of the primacy effect, that is,, we better remember the first thing we have seen, heard or felt.

What is the halo effect?

It is an event that takes place when we evaluate something or someone from the knowledge of a trait Y we issue a further generalization. For example, if we are introduced to someone who seems attractive to us (positive trait), we will tend to associate other characteristics that are also positive towards this person, and we will surely have a greater tendency to get closer than to whoever has transmitted us, in the first moment, a trait negative.

Hasn't it ever happened to you, having met someone who expressed a mean gesture and you have decided that you did not like him? Or on some occasion, have you shown reluctance to enter somewhere, because you lived there an unpleasant experience the last? time you went and did not leave a good impression?

Sometimes you have to give second chances, we don't always have the same experiences, although we repeat in a place where before we have experienced something not very pleasant. And we can also meet a beautiful person when he was not going through his best moment. If we get carried away by these effects, we may be making mistakes.

How do these effects influence us?

If our mission is to be hired for a job, or to fit into a group, it is of paramount importance to make a good first impression, since this will trigger in others a series of associated ideas that will form a scheme of how you are, to consequence of the above effects. It is important to take care of this first impression, because no second chances for a first impression.

We must also take into account another theory, which indicates that, in addition to the first and last (or most recent) impressions,  the features that are most remembered are the most striking or those that can be associated with something else. If we take the list that we emitted at the beginning, the most striking word, probably, is "happiness", since it is a state of the people and all the others are things that we can see, therefore, it deviates from the list and will be more easy to remember. And on the other hand, sun and cloud, are related words, which can be associated and remembered more easily..

Taking into account the aforementioned theories, we have to take great care how we present ourselves to an interview or before a group, and if, because of our nerves we have done something wrong, try to finish making a good impression to let the "recency effect" act in our favor.

It is also convenient to highlight a positive trait or skill related to the position to be held, a positive and smiling attitude, and a friendly farewell. In this way, we will reinforce the good memory or modify in our favor a possible wrong first impression, and we will leave the interviewer, or the group, a "good taste in the mouth".