Faces and first impressions

6 Minute English

语言学习

2017-06-29

6 分钟
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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.