During the beginning of the Mystery and Meaning reading, I was thinking about how people always say how important it is to make a good first impression. The first part of this article proved why that is actually so important. People take the first information that is given about you to make other assumptions about you that will round out who you are and help them to better understand you, though those assumptions might actually be very incorrect. This makes sense to me because we do not like to have unanswered questions lingering in our minds, but it is also really annoying because the first impression you make on somebody might not be representative of who you are as a person. Maybe you are having a bad day and are in a really bad mood when you meet someone for the first time and they hold onto this image of you that is not accurate because it is based on that one experience. I was reminded about a scene in The Office in which Dwight is talking about Pam and says that the first time they met he did not like her and ever since then she’s been lovely and easy to work with, but he still hates her regardless. I wonder to what extent that could actually be true for someone. After that section of the reading, I am wondering how long that first impression actually lasts/if you can ever get rid of it completely.
Also throughout the Mystery and Meaning reading, I was thinking about what it means for female leaders. It was talking a lot about how if we do not have the full story on someone or something we fill in some of that information based on what we have seen in the past. But, in the past, we have had very few females leaders so it would probably be harder to just fill in some of this missing information. I was thinking about implicit leadership theories and the prototype matching hypothesis, which both have historically negative impacts on female leaders because women do not match what most people are used to seeing in the past and thus make it more difficult for them to hold leadership positions.
Every time I read about the Stanford Prison Experiment I find it to be really scary. It illustrates that you can never truly know how you will act in any given situation that you have not encountered before. It is always easiest to think that you will always do the right thing, but that is by no means ever guaranteed. Though you might have a strong moral compass, you can still be pushed to extremes that cause you to act in a manner outside of those morals. It’s scary to think that, despite how well you think you know yourself, you cannot even truly predict your own behavior.
You mention first impressions being important because people will associate the information they learn about you into different schemas that they already have. However, I wonder if the importance of a first impression can be downgraded in any way? Like is there a way for people to showcase themselves fully enough in a first impression that it doesn’t leave the gaps to be grouped wrongly? Or is that just what a good first impression it, not leaving the gaps?
One aspect that I find so disturbing about the Stanford prison experiment is what you mentioned at the end of your response: that we can think that we know ourselves but we can never truly predict our behavior in certain situations. I think this relates back to the meaning and mystery reading about how we like to have all the answers about everything. I think that explains why this aspect scares me so much because the one person we should have all the answers about is ourselves and we still don’t.
I liked your emphasis on first impressions and your example from The Office. I feel like I’ve had similar interactions like the one between Dwight and Pam where on first impression, I did not like that person but have changed my mind over time. For me, at least, even after I know that I like a person, I always remember in the back of my mind that I didn’t like them for some reason, even if I can’t pinpoint what that is.
Just as you were curious about how female leaders would relate to the information in the Mystery and Meaning article, I was wondering the same thing about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Would it have been different if it was just women? If so, how/why? And what if there was a mix of men and women or just male prisoners and female guards or vice versa? Just like we have fewer female leaders to use to fill in the gaps, we have fewer examples of female authority figures so I think those could be interesting scenarios to consider.