The 6 psychological keys to getting people to like you

First impressions rule: we explain how our psyche works when we meet someone.

Oscar Wilde once said that "you never get a second chance to make a good first impression" and he wasn't wrong. And the fact is that making others like you starts with a furtive glance, and our unconscious dictates the sentence.

How do you make a good impression to make others like you?

The social psychologist John Bargh of Yale University concluded in his research that our brain only needs two tenths of a second to form the first impression. Later the information was expanded and thanks to neuroimaging techniques it was shown that this first impression comes from the limbic system, which is the brain system responsible for emotional management, and more specifically, the amygdala.

In this short process we sentence people: if they have made a good impression on us, it will be easier for us to be predisposed to establish a relationship with them. If they have made a bad impression... it will be much more complicated.

The key is in the first impression

To tell the truth, rationality is far from being involved in the process of impression formation and is more of an emotional process. and it is more of an emotional and unconscious process. Therefore, speed of formation, emotionality and resistance to change constitute the fundamental characteristics of social impression, which is the genesis of our sympathy for some people.

With this speed and intuition we are exposed to being categorized every time we meet new people in the different environments in which we operate on a daily basis. Do strangers tend to like or dislike you? The answer to this question is not in the critical and rational thinking of people you meet for the first time, but in unconscious mechanisms that we will explain below.

• Read more: "10 tips to make a good first impression".

Discovering the thinking mechanisms associated with first impressions.

The impression emerges from the social interaction and begins with the first contact with the person.. In this first contact, an assessment is produced in which, from observable information, we infer unobservable traits. This assessment will condition future interactions and the relationship between the subjects.

Since this is done emotionally and intuitively, the global impressions we form of other people are dominated by stereotypes and idiosyncratic personal constructs. Research indicates that in forming impressions of other people we consider the components and then average them in complex ways, or that certain components may influence the interpretation and meaning of all other components and dominate the resulting impression. We tend to remember individuals in terms of their traits, but also in terms of their behavior.We tend to remember individuals in terms of their traits, but also in terms of their behavior and appearance. They can be stored as individual persons: Paco, Maria, Antonio; or as members of a social category: the indiethe hipsterthe sportsman, etc. We like some of them better, and others worse, according to multiple variables that interact with our beliefs, prejudices and preferences.

The impression is produced when the perceiver "organizes" the information received from the perceived person. The result of the process is a global, coherent image of the perceived person: the first impression. From the first impression we decide how we feel and what we will do about a person; whether we like or dislike him or her.If the first impression is negative, we will most likely not try to relate to that person. If the first impression is negative, it is most likely that we will not try to relate to that person. The first impression has informed us of everything we wanted to know and since it is based on the activation of a brain structure not based on reason, it is very resistant to change.

Biases involved in impressions

As we said before, impressions are characterized by their lack of rationality and their brevity of formation, which means that heuristic pathways and cognitive biases are very determinant in their creation.

They play an essential role in explaining why we like or dislike someone without knowing exactly why this is so.

Perceptual accentuation

It consists in the evaluation of people according to their group of belonging. The valuation will depend on the identity schemas and categories that the observer has. If the group of belonging that we attribute to the person has a high value for us, then the valuation will be positive.

On the other hand, if we pigeonhole the person in a group to which we have a negative attitude, our first impression will be decisive.. This bias is the result of the representativeness heuristic

2. Halo effect

This is a frequent bias in human perception, which consists of evaluating people on the basis of a salient feature, positive or negative, and generalizing from that first impression to characteristics that the person may not have, i.e., associating positive characteristics with other equally positive ones, associating positive characteristics with others that are equally positive.. We take one or two positive characteristics and just because of them, we assume other equally positive ones or vice versa. For example, by having a product as cool and innovative as the iPad, every product we see from Apple we assume it is good and innovative.

Positive traits are generalized to a brand because of a single product that has an outstanding trait.. The same is true of attractive people. For the sole observable fact of being beautiful, traits of intelligence, health and economic well-being are attributed to them that we have no evidence that they present, but this bias tells us that beautiful is good, healthy, has money and is influential.

3. Effect of mere exposure

The mere repeated exposure of a subject to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the positive attitude towards this stimulus to increase. towards this stimulus. This leads to a positive appraisal of familiar people or things that do not have any associated negative emotions or prejudices.

For example, we can remember the typical song that at first you do not like but then with each exposure you like it more and more.

4. Perceptual defense

It is based on the delayed recognition of stimuli or threatening information, i.e., what I do not want to see.that is, what I do not want to see. The well-known phrase "love is blind" is explained by this bias. When we like someone at first or we are in love with them, we can rarely see the defects they present, while for the rest of our friends and family they are obvious.

5. Perceptual insight

Quick recognition of stimuli and information that can benefit our interests.. If we know someone who plays the same sport as us, is a fan of our favorite series, has the same studies or any other mutual similarity, they will stand out among the others when we meet them in the hallways.

6. Mood

The mood we are in at the time always influences the impressions we make.. We may meet someone wonderful but if at that moment we are deeply angry or sad, the laws of affective infusion tell us that we will get a negative impression of that person.

To be liked is in your hand if you know the keys to first impressions.

I would like to let you know an infallible system to avoid falling into these biases and thus form an impression of someone for what he or she really is, and not for what the human being is capable of erring when the thinking system 1 is active.

However, we are all human and will fall prey to these biases, we are all human and will fall prey to these biases to a greater or lesser extent because of our human condition.. So for first impressions, the best antidote is to know the existence of these biases and to know which of them is acting on our first impression. On the other hand, you can use these biases to your advantage to make a good impression. If you know the interests and tastes of the person you want to make a good impression on, the halo effect and perceptual accentuation, among others, can work in your favor.

After all, remember that there are no second chances, remember that there are no second chances when it comes to making first impressions..