As it has been said, a person only gets one chance to make a good first impression, and therefore it behooves that person that is up for that interview or similar, to try to present themselves in a way and manner in which that first impression will be good – thus placing that person in a much better position, than if that first impression was not so good. While there are all sorts of ways to make a good first impression upon another, the foundation of doing so, has an awful lot in common, in basically meeting what the perceived expectations are of the person that we are meeting with for the first time. That is to say, if we look the part or act the part of what that person so wants to see, then the first impression that they are going to have, is often going to be rather favorable; and once a first impression is imprinted upon a person’s mind, they have a strong tendency to stick with that first impression for as long as possible, because as much as we like to think that most people, do not render a decision, until they have taken in all or as much relevant information to the subject at hand that they are able to – in fact, we find that a lot of people have a distinct tendency to take shortcuts so as to make up their mind about the other person, long beforehand. This thus signifies that first impressions are rather sticky, in the sense, that once a person has made their decision, they are often reluctant to backtrack and thereby to change such, of which part of the reason why this is so, is their hesitation to admit that their initial impression, was fundamentally flawed.
While it could be said, that society might well be better served if we were slower to rush to judgment, whether that be of a first impression, or in the judging of a particular situation, or in regards to a perplexing problem – the thing that has to be taken into fair account, is that indecisiveness is basically considered to be a character flaw, so that all those that seem to be taking an interminable amount of time to come to a decision about something of importance, are often seen to be part of the problem and thus not part of the solution. After all, many a person believes that it is more important to make a decision, rightly or wrongly, than to endlessly debate it back and forth – for at least when a decision has been made, there is now something of substance to accomplish or to work upon or to work with.
Therefore, first impressions have a way of being rather sticky, because from the viewpoint of having made our judgment in regards to our perception of a particular person, we now have a strong tendency to suffer from the bias of subsequently seeing things from the perspective that favors our first impression, and thus to discount all those other things that are not consistent with such. So , in effect, while each of us would like to think that we are at our core, fair-minded people, the truth of the matter is, that many of us, have a strong tendency to be impressed by those that appear to be in harmony with our mindset, and far less with all those, that are not.