They say that first impressions last, but how accurate are they really? Are they all they're made out to be? For example, is it actually possible to fall in love with someone at first sight?
Well the truth turns out to be more surprising than you think...
A study by academics at the psychology departments of the Universities of New York and Harvard demonstrated that certain parts of the brain (the amygdala and the posterior cingulate cortex to be precise) light up when we are meeting people for the first time. Not only that, they tend to light up more when we are formulating knowledge about that person that falls into a consistent pattern. In other words, our brains are wired in such a way as to prefer consistency when we are forming impressions about people. I.e. we are deploying a filter early on; we are starting to sacrifice anything that may appear paradoxical or inconsistent, in order to draw a coherent judgment.
That then takes us to the world of psychotherapy and the more recent genre of the self help website. To understand this further, to my mind, we have to go to the bookshelf and brush off the cobwebs from the likes of Freud and Jung. While some of the findings of early psychoanalysis have been more controversial than others, some have certainly stood the test of time. The description of one of our most fundamental defence mechanisms - projection - is one of them.
As I teach within the Sileotherapy self help website; we all possess within us numerous traits and aspects that we find hard to carry. This occurs whenever the trait evokes a sufficiently strong feeling within us - in a positive or negative way. Whenever the feeling crosses a certain threshold of intensity, it becomes too difficult to carry inside, so we throw it out onto someone else and carry round the feeling as if it's about them instead. It's a lot easier to carry that way. Strong feelings of love and hate, anger or attraction, usually have some roots in this process.
This study, very interestingly, seems to verify anatomically, the existence of this phenomenon. The truth is we know very little about people when we first meet them - with few exceptions - it will take at least several more encounters before we can form anything close to a fair picture. Nevertheless, on day one, we seem to be in the business of conjuring an image that already feels consistent and so, in some way, complete. How is this possible? it must be projection - our old friend - coming into play. The consistent impressions we are filtering through must, in some way, be facilitating our own projection needs.
Basically, we are filling in the blank canvas before us with our own inner colouring pencils.
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Dr Russell Razzaque earned his medical degree from the University of London, he is a member of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists and is a Consultant Psychiatrist practicing in the British National Health Service. In 2009, after several years of development, he launched a stillness based online self help program - Sileotherapy - helping people go beyond thought and realise the power within:
http://www.meditation-therapy.net
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