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Hello and welcome to Six Minute English, the program where we explore an interesting topic and bring you six bits of useful vocabulary.
I'm Neil.
And I'm Rob.
Today we're talking about first impressions and how they're often wrong.
So let's start with the term first impression.
It's the idea or opinion that you have about someone after meeting them for only a short time.
It's very natural to make a quick judgment about someone based on their appearance or facial expression.
We're going to be hearing about the research of Professor Alexander Todoroff from Princeton University in the US.
First, though a question, how long does he say it takes to form an impression about someone's face?
Is it A under one second, B one second or C six seconds?
I'll go for B one second.
Well we'll find out if you're right or not later on in the program.
So Alexander Todoroff has been researching our impressions.
His tests ask people to decide whether they thought faces were dominant, competent, trustworthy or extroverted.
Let's just look at those words for a second.
Dominant means being strongest or most important.
Competent means being able to do things.
While if you're trustworthy, it means people trust you.