I read somewhere that within four seconds of meeting someone, the brain has already formed its initial impression of that person. That’s all the time you have before someone’s subconscious has made a preliminary sketch of who you are.

Maybe it’s a part of human nature to want to judge people so quickly, being that it’s practically unavoidable. We do, as a matter of course, rely on generalizations and stereotypes. We group, we label and we define. And oh, how some people cling to those groups, labels and definitions. There are people who love to label, and those who love to be labeled.

There are people who depend on gathering others into easily defined groups and people who count on existing within those group definitions. When the world is busy being divided into social strata and classes, it’s pretty much guaranteed that first impressions will matter.

Perhaps it’s because I moved around a lot that I seem a bit over-sensitive to the whole issue of believing too much in first impressions. There’s nothing like being the new kid to make you realize how eager people are to judge, and judge quickly.

And maybe if you never had to get up in front of a bunch of 30 or so random kids and briefly tell them who you are and where you came from (I will never for the life of me understand why middle school and high school teachers inflict this particularly ridiculous form of punishment on new students), then you won’t understand exactly how fast those impressions are made and accepted.

After attending three high schools in three semesters, I feel somewhat qualified to testify to the fact that we give way too much credit to first impressions. People aren’t always who they at first seem to be. They can’t be figured out in four seconds. We’re way too complex, way too intricate, way too multifaceted. Trying to judge too quickly with not enough information is just asking for trouble.

After all, isn’t it really first impressions that keep loads of kids in Dimensions of Culture week after week? Aren’t first impressions what lead to racism, sexism, discrimination? I wonder, is it possible to avoid all that? Maybe, just maybe, if we all tried really hard, we wouldn’t have to give in to those first impressions. Maybe we wouldn’t have to judge.

Or perhaps that’s too naive of me. Perhaps that’s just letting my oh-so-traumatizing new-kid experiences mess with my otherwise unaffected reasoning (Actually, the other day someone told me that I seemed well-adjusted considering how much my family moved around, once again confirming the fallacy of first impressions). But we shouldn’t have to give in to initial impressions. We should know better.

Most of us are smart enough to consider ourselves more than how we dress, what music we listen to or the first few words out of our mouths. Those generalizations and biases create false representations that stick, and the inability to surpass that is a fault indeed.

Don’t judge too quickly. We judge too quickly, and that’s not OK. We rely too heavily on first impressions. We give in to the first label that comes to mind. It’s not laziness, per se. It’s not because we’re too busy to take the time to really understand someone before forming a reliable representation of his or her personality. It’s not even because the human mind forms an impression after four seconds of interaction. We allow ourselves to believe in first impressions because we want it that way.

We like to be shallow. We like to believe in the validity of the superficial, when really we know that this method is completely unfair. We’re so eager to categorize. You like her or you dislike her, he’s cute or he’s gross, she’s funny or she’s boring as hell.

In reality, the lines between categories are blurry, the divisions are unclear, and people can’t be judged accurately right away. We forget that there is a middle ground.

If we simply choose to look deeper than initial impressions and surface appearances then first impressions have been entirely superseded.

Don’t give in to the shallowness of quick judgments. Don’t give those first four seconds too much credit. People are more than your first impression of them.