We size up someone's trustworthiness within milliseconds of meeting them

[tannybogus]

<snip>
But recently, behavioral scientists have also begun to unravel the inner workings of trust. Their aim is to decode the subtle signals that we send out and pick up, the cues that, often without our knowledge, shape

our sense of someone's reliability. Researchers have discovered that surprisingly small factors - where we meet someone, whether their posture mimics ours, even the slope of their eyebrows or the thickness of their chin - can matter as much or more than what they say about themselves. We size up someone's trustworthiness within milliseconds of meeting them, and while we can revise our first impression, there are powerful psychological tendencies that often prevent us from doing so - tendencies that apply even more strongly if we've grown close.

"Trust is the baseline," says Susan Fiske, a social psychologist at Princeton University. "Trustworthiness is the very first thing that we decide about a person, and once we've decided, we do all kinds of elaborate gymnastics to believe in people."

According to researchers, the subtler aspects of body language or physiognomy are difficult, if not impossible, to manipulate. But what has become public about Gerhartsreiter's methods - his preppy clothes, penchant for approaching people at country clubs and society events, and modest hints at a storied lineage - matches up with a body of research that suggests just how powerful signals of common identity and status can be, and how they can override our better judgment.

And they illustrate how, though we live in an era of worry over faceless Internet predators and Web identity thieves, we can be at our most vulnerable face-to-face.
<snip>


http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/08/17/confidence_game/?page=full

This article has important implications for politics. If we size people up in milliseconds and fight changing our impressions,
then knowing how to control these 2 things would be priceless. A minute change could make a huge difference.O8) :evilgrin:

[Rambis]

1. never let me down

I can size up somebody in no time- If I get a bad reading right away I never deal with the person on any level because they always end up being just what I thought they were.

[Buns_of_Fire]

2. Did they make the person on the left look like James Carville on purpose?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Carville never looked that good on his best day.

[Vickers]

3. The Many Faces of Jeff Gannon

:P

[SpiralHawk]

5. "You rang?" - Jeff Gannon, official Bush White House Male B & D escort*

* According to the official Secret Service records, male prostitute Jeff Gannon visited the George AWOL Bush White House over 200 times, with several apparent overnighters. Google it.