Was thinking about this today from a work perspective, as the team I am in has grown through some organizational changes and I am facilitating a "get to know each other" session. I know most of them quite well, but many are unfamiliar with each other. We are going to play a bit of a game where we give our first impressions of each other, and for those who know each other well enough, say what is one of the person's best skills. It should be interesting to see what comes up.
We can only make one first impression, but how many times have our own opinions been wrong about someone? Was talking with the wife on the way to work about making intuitive judgements and how most of the time, we judge without ever knowing if we are correct, so we walk away feeling like we are correct, since we have no evidence to the contrary. If we were to apply the same hit rates to the times we have been confirmed correct or proven wrong, we would be far less confident in our intuition.
That should be a good game...maybe hook up a small electric shock button that you can deploy on them, maybe built into the chairs. It'll have no bearing on the actual process but I'm sure could be a lot of fun for you. Go on with you, allow yourself some fun at work! 😋
Seriously though, first impressions are fascinating, often right based on limited information and then sometimes they need to change as more information comes to hand. It's the physical most react to in those ten seconds as there's not much else to work with.
We judge people so easily and often without perspective and facts, it's a human failing to some degree I guess. Like I said in another comment here, see me on a work day and you'll judge one way, and another on Sunday if you saw me at the hardware store or the gun range. Just snippets of me, but people judge either way. We judge people on so many stupid things, clothes they may be wearing, where they shop, vehicle they drive, age or physical appearance and so on. It takes more than those slices of moments to know a person and have the ability to judge them in a more overall manner with better perspective and context.
It's an interesting subject. Fortunately humans have the ability to change their opinion.