Look poorly and you’ll be treated poorly

by Sandy Dumont, Image Consultant
Inside Business August 2005Back to main list

First impressions are powerful. Harvard University concluded that it takes a mere two seconds to make an in-depth and long-lasting impression about a person. In a study, two groups of Harvard students responded to questionnaires about professors. One group had actually taken the professors' classes, while the other group saw two-second video clips of individual professors. The correlation was amazing. The two groups had similar impressions.

More recently, research at Princeton University suggests that it may take only one second to form a profound impression. For the Princeton research, more than 800 students were shown pairs of photographs of real candidates for Congress, winners and losers. They were asked to pick winners and also say why they picked them. On average, volunteers looked at each pair of photos for one second, yet they chose correctly 68.8 percent of the time.

Professor Leslie Zebrowitz of Brandeis University, author of Reading Faces: Window to the Soul?, says it boils down to having a baby face. "A more baby-faced individual is perceived as less competent than a more mature-faced, but equally attractive, peer of the same age and sex," asserts the professor.

"Don't judge me by my looks, judge me by my competence," we all insist. Unfortunately, we do judge a book by its cover, and even moreso today in this fast-paced world where time is of a premium.

And just what is that judgment process? Apparently the brain creates a composite of all the components of a person's image or persona and turns the components into a holistic overall first impression that is greater than the sum of all the components. It's pretty much like the effect of the famous Mona Lisa. We cannot recall any details and are left only with an overall evocative impression. The Mona Lisa effect. In other words, the overall impression of a person is captivating and memorable.

Obviously, to make a lasting impression, all that is necessary is to look really good or really bad! Most people fall somewhere in the middle and leave no lasting impression, so they are dismissed from our memories.

In the world of image, if you do everything right, no one notices. Conversely, if just one element of the overall image is out of sync, that's the only thing that is remembered. And it's not just spinach in the teeth or a run in the stockings. Dated hair for women and unprofessional ties for men are the biggest offenders.

So what else can go wrong? Everything about your appearance, including hair, makeup for women, accessories, clothing, color, "line" or shape, grooming and comportment, including body language. The shape or "line" of a person's lips or eyebrows can suggest that he or she is friendly, cynical, threatening or even bland.

Not only must you look professional from head to toe, you must do so at all times ? even in casual wear. As with product branding, you cannot let your brand down for a moment, as a surgeon did recently. A client of mine from Washington, D.C., recounted that he ran into his surgeon at the grocery story on a Saturday, and the doctor had obviously been doing handiwork around the house, as he wore rumpled, somewhat soiled clothing. My client gasped with shock at the sight of his surgeon looking so thoroughly unprofessional. He said that he totally lost confidence in the surgeon and felt he could never permit the man to perform surgery on him again.

Look poorly and you'll be treated poorly. Look polished and professional and you will be treated as if you are a very important and special person.

Sandy Dumont, THE Image Architect is a fashion and image consultant based in Virginia with 30 years of international and national experience helping individuals and Fortune 500 companies improve their image. She conducts customized Branding for People™ image workshops on a regular basis.
For more information, visit www.theimagearchitect.com or call 757/627-6669.

by Sandy Dumont, THE Image Architect © 2002-2005
Originally published in INSIDE BUSINESS,August 2005



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