Navigate / search

40 Ways to Make a Good First Impression

You’re already an impressive person. But in this article I’ll show the ways to make a good first impression on a guy, girl, parent – whoever. The imprint you learn to leave on people gets them to fossilize the memory.

Whether you’re the girl at the bar yelling to her friends “Oh my I have to pee SO BAD!” or the guy whose voice cracks over his first words, it’s hard to erase a first impression from someone’s brain. As said in Big Talk, where there’s a whole chapter on ways to make a good first impression, “A first impression isn’t a last impression; it’s an influential impression.”

A good impression at first sight is what I call “the lazy man’s way to make people like you”. Princeton University research shows our snap judgments remain consistent over time. If someone judges you as “attractive”, “friendly”, and “open” within 100 milliseconds, they’re likely to think you’re all that by the end of the conversation. The study found one thing changes as the conversation continues: a person’s confidence in the accuracy of their first impression.

Call it bias or unfairness. I call it human psychology. Work with it if you want to be seen as awesome. Learn how to impress people at first sight. Here are 40 ways to make a great first impression. Read more

Review of Influence by Robert Cialdini

This is a book review of Robert B. Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, a classic book on subtly getting people to do what you want.

Robert Cialdini is currently Regent’s Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University. His book Influence is a fantastic classic on persuasion as he transforms what most people took as hidden and unknown variables in decision-making into clear principles that you can use to influence people. Read more