Psychologists call it "thin slicing."
Within moments of meeting people, you decide all sorts of things about them, from status to intelligence to promiscuity.
If you're trustworthy
People decide on your trustworthiness in a tenth of a second.
Princeton researchers found this out by giving one group of university students 100 milliseconds to rate the attractiveness, competence, likeability, aggressiveness, and trustworthiness of actors' faces.
Members of another group were able to take as long as they wanted. While other traits differed depending on time spent looking, trustworthiness was basically the same.
If you're high-status
A Dutch study found that people wearing name-brand clothes — Lacoste and Tommy Hilfiger, to be precise — were seen as higher status than folks wearing non-designer clothes.
"Perceptions did not differ on any of the other dimensions that might affect the outcome of social interactions,"the authors wrote. "There were no differences in perceived attractiveness, kindness, and trustworthiness."
Just status.
If you're straight or gay
People can read a man's sexual orientation in a twentieth of a second — the minimum amount of time it takes to consciously recognize a face.
"The rapid and accurate perception of male sexual orientation may be just another symptom of a fast and efficient cognitive mechanism for perceiving the characteristics of others,"wrote study authors Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
