If it moves you in a direction that is good, little else matters, but these readings probably owe at least something to someone making some lucky guesses or applying aspects of "cold reading" (whether they're aware of it or not).
Agreed.
I suppose I don't put much stock in first impressions. Do we sometimes have to rely on them? Sure. Sometimes they're the only things we've got, and when they are, they're very important.
But first impressions are notoriously difficult to change for the very reason that people do think they're dead-on, when they're in fact based on very little good info, and subject to such various skewing factors as MySoCalledLaugh mentions above. Incoming information received afterward is put through the filter of the beliefs emerging from the impression that's been set, and the aspects of that information that validate those beliefs are attended to more and given more weight than the aspects that differ or would lead one away from those belief.
First impressions are like preconceptions with just a trace more information. And that trace more information can make you cling to the conclusions you've come to well beyond what reason would support.
I personally put stock in constant evaluation of people's recent actions to see how they match with their broader history, and slowly give me a bearing on their character. I'll never have a complete picture of their character, as there will be some things I'll never know about them. Some things, no one will know about them. Sometimes people do things out of line with their broader history. Sometimes they make mistakes. And so, I have to be able to recognize these as outliers and poorly representative of the true character of the person. I do this naturally, with everyone.
What I find interesting is how rarely continuous evaluation is exercised among others. I've seen people who are treated as though the first impression (or for that matter, the last) is the only thing that matters, and folks delude themselves into thinking this snapshot is representative of the broader character, and so, never seek any deeper. Misjudgments of this nature can result in the shunning of people whose history is generally good, or embracing and constantly, almost willfully, blinding themselves to recurring problematic, damaging, and even dangerous behaviors among those who were fortunate enough to set a positive (or even stronger, sympathetic) impression.
That said, what I'm talking about isn't "psychoanalysis", but rather informally taking the measure of people and behaviors that I suspect most of us do at some level on a daily basis.
Feel free to remove this post if I'm wrong. If I'm right, there may be even more cleanup needed. lol Here we go again!
