First Impressions

The concept of first impressions is strange. I feel like it's not something that is usually consciously thought about, but when you dwell on it you start to wonder. How much do first impressions actually affect the way a person perceives you? In class, we each wrote our first impressions of each other on notecards that we passed around. When I got mine back, it made me wonder how true I am to my personality when I first meet people.  Here's a picture of my notecard with the responses:

I thought that the comment that I was "reasonable" was interesting. I would say this is fairly accurate, as I am a logical person. It's interesting how team building brings out traits in people that might otherwise take a while to find.

Two of the comments on my notecard are contradictory. I was called both "outgoing" and "quiet". I don't know how I could make such a strong impression on one person to be called outgoing, and such a weak impression on another to be called quiet.

I also wonder about how I let subconscious first impressions of other people affect the way I perceive them. How many times have I let something meaningless negatively affect the way I saw them after the meeting was over? For example, I felt irritated by one member of my group, but when I actually broke down the each thought about them I had to write on the notecard, I realized that they weren't as terrible as I had thought at first. As people we are so judgmental, and that will never change, but sometimes it does good to step back from a situation to figure out where the judgments are coming from.