“You can not judge a book by itscover” is a very famous saying which means that noteverything is what it appears to be, especially people. We often make snap judgments about othersbased on our first impressionand rarely change our minds later. Of course, first impressions sometimes seem
to be very accurate, but, in my opinion, at the same time it is so easy to get
them wrong.Alarge percentage of people make their lasting impressions and judgments about
others within the first few minutes of meeting where they pay attention to
person’s appearance, speech abilities or disabilities, cultural behavior. In
many cases people even form their positive or negative opinions of someone just
by looking at a photograph, reading, hearing, seeing something about someone
whom they may not even know personally. Such first impressions can be very
powerful and their effect can last over a lifetime. Unfortunately, alot of people give too much importance to first impressions to form their
permanent opinion about someone. It is wrong to judge people by what we saw or
heard about them for a brief time. Maybe the person just had the worst day and
you do not know all facts or you just caught a person at the wrong time or
wrong place. The same situation happened with one of my best friends. When I
first met Kate, I thought she is a very nervous, secretive and just strange
woman. Of course, I did not think I could become her friend. But when we met
another time at the discotheque I realized that she is very funny, easy-going,
kind a talkative person. We seem to be very alike, she even apologized for her
strange behavior previous time and explained that she just had some problems at
the university.However,from my daily experience I can state that sometimes first impressions about
people can be right. We also can judge people by their attitude towards others,
or simply to say by their actions and deeds. Person’s reactions in different
situations, his or her attitude to friends, parents, relatives and just
strangers can show everyone’s real face. For example, a few years ago my friend
invited her groupmate Ira for a birthday party. My first impression about her
was dual and my intuition whispered to me that she was not a person that she
pretended to be. As a result, a little bit later I have heard Ira’s
conversation with her friend and she told that her intentions on this birthday
party were just to cause to quarrel with my friend and her boyfriend because
she was crazy about him. In this case we can say that first impressions are
really count.Thus,the above examples show that influence of first impressions has two sides of a
coin. From the one hand, people need at least several impressions to know each
other and it is a little bit naive to claim about some magic abilities to
easily judge a person with one glance. From the other hand, sometimes our
intuition like a mysterious message can give us a warning about someone. I had
an experience connected with both situations, but in any case it really takes a
long time to know person completely. There is no need to ignore our first
impressions the same as there is no reason to take them too serious. Just
remember that earlier or later everyone shows his or her real face.
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