The breakdown of first impression

For most people, their social personality is different than their real personality. In occasions, a person would like to, or even sometimes need to hide their real personality while socializing with certain people in order to reach particular goals. In this type of case the social personality shown could be both totally and partially different from the actual one. Meanwhile, some people would simply limit the amount of personality they show to strangers, and the percentage of the personality shown normally increases as the relationship gets closer. All in all, as we are only capable of catching a blurry glimpse of one's personality at the beginning, getting a first impression that is completely distinct from the true side of the person is not a rare thing to happen.

When I first met my high school basketball coach at the varsity team try out, he gave me an impression that this well built, severe looking, six-seven man really should not be easy to get along with. That is a quite legitimate impression you will get from a man like him. However, when the try out begins he changed this whole impression in my mind. I was stunned how humorous he is when he gave the speech that emphasizes the importance of enjoying the daily drills as well as the games; also when he explains basketball is a that simple game since all you need to do is put an orange ball into a similar colored rim. Furthermore, when he teased those senior players for not standing out strong, I realized I was deceived by his appearance.

Since some part of my social persona is quite much the opposite from my true personality, I always make my peers form totally wrong impressions of me. I still remember my close friends' reactions when they heard that I was almost elected to be the quietest senior by my fellow classmates, " Are you for real?" is written on each of their faces. It will definitely be a joke for a talkative guy like me to be granted with that honor.

Building one's image is similar as playing jigsaw, and informations we got about the person are just like the small pieces of the jigsaw. Therefore, in order to complete the image we need to gather all the informations and put them in an organized order. And that is something impossible to be done in a short time contact. So our first impression is always wrong, or at least it is not accurate.