Perception...

Today was my first lecture in Understanding the Customer with Ruth. This morning we have been discussing first impressions. We all have a perception of people and it usually takes only 17 seconds to create your first impression of somebody.
Ruth introduced us to two people this morning and we had to write down what we though their interests were, what their personalities were like just from what they looked like. Some of our guesses were quite accurate but others were harder to define. Girl A was wearing red and other bright colours so we all naturally assumed she was more confident than girl B who was wearing neutral colours. We also though that both girl A and girl B were from another country and narrowed where they were both from down to an east European country, we later found out that they were from Poland. I found this quite interesting as even when you do not hear somebody speak and listen to their accent people can still tell what part of the world they are from.
Although we did get some aspects of who girl A and girl B were we also got some wrong. We thought from there fashionable clothing they would be into shopping but both girls said they were not interested in fashion at all. We also said they neither girl was religious and girl B was.

A good example of first impressions being wrong is on Britain's got Talent. When Susan Boyle first hit our screens there was a mass sigh of 'oh no not another stupid act' but how wrong were we? People judged her on the way she looked, dressed and spoke but she had an amazing singing voice and has fast become a huge hit both here and in America and the following You Tube clip has received 40,710,651 views and counting.



It just goes to show first impressions do count but they are not always correct.