Why First Impressions Matter, New Study Suggests Explanation
People make first impressions so quickly that they've already formed their opinions before they even realize they did. For example, research has found that it takes no more than 50 milliseconds -- 0.05 seconds -- for Internet users to form an opinion about a website. What's more, people decide whether a person is trustworthy or not within just a tenth of a second.
The reason first impressions last so long in a person's mind may be because of the emotional impact those impressions have. A new study published in the journal ELife suggests that emotions directly influence learning and memory processes in the brain.
Researchers from the University of Haifa in Israel analyzed the electrical activity in the brains of rats during social behavior. They found that a state of excitement produced ...