Snap. Patti Wood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ “Honey, what’s wrong?” She answered, “That man just robbed me at gunpoint.”

      Research proves that, while we need to create categories to understand our world, we must be careful of stereotypes, such as “well-dressed men can be trusted.” As I mentioned earlier, stereotypes are maladaptive forms of categories. They do not correspond to what is actually present in the environment. In my case, the fact that he was well dressed had no bearing on whether or not he was a gun-wielding robber.

      The moral of the story? Go with your gut. Even though I am an expert in body language, I ignored my first gut-level intuition of danger because it seemed illogical. However, my subconscious mind was busy picking up on little nonverbal details that told me the guy in the suit was not harmless. My limbic brain was processing cues, including the fact that a man in a suit, in the middle of a workday, was lingering by a magazine rack but not actually looking at the periodicals. “This is weird!” said my brain, leading to my “Danger!” stress response. Later, at the checkout counter, though my conscious mind wanted me to ignore it, my limbic brain got me to leave that part of the store. I’ve had many instances of reading people with eerie accuracy at a first meeting; perhaps you have, as well. This story is a reminder to pay attention to the powerful intelligence processed with amazing speed in your deep limbic system.

      In the movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the character Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist, goes to a suspected serial killer’s house while his suspect is gone and finds evidence that the person is indeed a killer. When Blomkvist hears that person return to the house, he starts to run away. The killer politely asks him to come back into the house for a drink, and as the killer keeps making that request, we see Blomkvist standing with his feet and lower torso turned away from the killer, signaling his desire to keep on running. Blomkvist, ignoring what his body so clearly wants to do, turns around and goes toward the killer, even as we in the audience yell out, “No, don’t do it!” When Blomkvist reenters the house, the killer greets him, revealing a gun and saying, “Our desire to be polite overrides our bodies’ desire to flee danger.”

      In snap impressions, pay attention to your body. It can read clues about danger and then alert your conscious mind. Your body also signals other types of first impressions. In the next few days, as you meet new people, check in with yourself from your toes to the top of your head and see how you feel in the presence of each new person. Notice whether your body feels ill at ease or stressed in any way.

      (Go to www.snapfirstimpressions.com for “Body Check In” — my instructions and a video on how to pay closer attention to your body’s signals when you meet other people.)

      The Gift of Intuition

      Shortly after my drugstore incident, I read Gavin de Becker’s bestseller The Gift of Fear. His premise: We are all “expert at predicting violent behavior. Like every creature, you can know when you are in the presence of danger. You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.” We downplay this remarkable inherent ability. Intuition, de Becker writes, “is often described as emotional, unreasonable, or inexplicable.” In general, “we much prefer logic.” We “worship logic, even when it’s wrong, and deny intuition, even when it’s right.”⁸

      At his website — Gavindebecker.com — you can access information about signs we shouldn’t ignore. Three important danger signals that he describes are particularly helpful to note when strangers make insistent attempts at conversation, refuse to take no for an answer, and press unwanted offers of help on you: these people seem to be charged up rather than discouraged by your tension, stress, or rejection of them; don’t let you finish a sentence; or give you excessive compliments, touch you, and continue to touch you even when you freeze, block, or pull away. These behaviors may seem romantic in movies, but they are not comfortable in real life. A member of one of my first-impressions workshops came up after the break and told me, “I just realized my ex-husband gave all the verbal and nonverbal signals you showed us the day I met him. I was scared of him in that first meeting, but he was so overwhelming that I let him into my life.”

      (More insights into recognizing danger and understanding our stress responses can be found at my website, www.snapfirstimpressions.com.)

      First Impressions Are Sticky

      Not only do we form first impressions very quickly, but also, as research has shown, it can take up to six months of constant interaction to change an incorrect first impression. This means that if you meet someone who for some reason doesn’t like you, it might take that person six months to change his mind and realize you’re a wonderful human being. That’s the power of the “primacy effect.” We tend to assign more weight to our first impression than to our later impressions. The primacy effect means that first impressions affect all future thoughts about the person. They are resistant to change partly because they are connected to our basic survival instincts.

      If we get good vibes from someone we meet, we may create what I call a “halo” around her. After that meeting, every time she smiles at us, makes full eye contact, or turns her heart toward us, we subconsciously note it and take it as further evidence of her niceness. Once the halo effect has taken hold, we tend to downplay any negative nonverbals we may pick up. If our friend is rude to a waiter, raising her voice and pointing her finger, we’re apt to brush it off with “Well, the waiter was ignoring us.” The halo makes it hard for us to change our first impression.

      The Power of Negative Impressions

      Dan met Donna, the wife of his friend Jay. “She was sour-faced and didn’t look at me when I introduced myself,” he says. “She left the room sighing and came back and dropped the baskets of chips and crackers in front of us and sat far away. That was ten years ago, and every time I am with her I see how far away she sits from me and how she rarely laughs, and I think, ‘What a cold person.’”

      The halo effect can be a marvelous thing. Research on happy marriages has shown that a spouse who fell in love at first sight may maintain a halo around his mate that allows him to be more forgiving of small transgressions. Noticing his wife commit a minor indiscretion, he is able to think, “Oh, well, that’s a little blip on this incredibly marvelous person.” This ability makes for a healthy, happy marriage. But as you might guess, the halo effect is dangerous if you don’t notice a big ole blimp flying over you with flashing lights saying, “Danger! Danger!”

      Negative first impressions stick as a result of what I call the “devil effect.” Let’s say that, on the morning of your first day on a new job, you are in the parking lot waiting to pull into a space that someone is vacating. Though your signal is blinking to show your intention to take the space, another car swoops in and steals it. The parking-space poacher hops out of her car, smiles and laughs, and then shrugs her shoulders, turning quickly and walking away.

       Angels and Devils

      Have you experienced the halo or devil effect? Take a moment to think about a time when you had a good first impression of someone, and about the information you gathered to confirm that impression. Were you rewarded with a good friendship or business interaction? Now remember a time when you had a bad feeling about someone and later learned your impression was correct. What specific behaviors did you see or hear that confirmed your impressions? How did you feel when you first met each of these people? How did you feel around them in later interactions?

      (Go to www.snapfirstimpressions.com for the video Angel or Devil: First Impression.)

      Minutes СКАЧАТЬ