First impression is the best impression

It is human’s basic tendency is to form a mental image of a person very fast based on the first few interactions. We tend to make decisions based on this mental image. Sometimes we decide a person good or bad based on what we have seen.

Is it good or bad?

What is good? What is bad? It is subjective to the observer. we perceive things based on our filters. When we start looking with the same filter, again and again, we are most likely to make a mistake.

We consider a person to be good if the person appears to be sharing our belief system. If a person appears to be doing things or having attributes which we think are good, we go ahead and declare that person as a good one. We don’t ask questions like, Are those behaviors and attributes are natural or emulated?

There is a possibility that we conclude at first impression due to misunderstanding the situation.

Why so fast?

We have several characteristics that we expose at various situations and people start creating mental images based on those instances naturally. Also, we have the natural urge to predict things and we make judgments. As we start making correct judgments, we get addicted to it. We start judging everyone based on first impressions and never re-evaluate them.

Applying it on machine learning?

In machine learning, It is very important that we do not feed incorrect data to the algorithm. Because if we feed incorrect data to the algorithm in training the results are going to be incorrect.

How do we correct this? we avoid overfitting the dataset and also we construct a feedback loop to fix wrong predictions.

But we do not apply this to ourselves. Because we have the tendency to suggest good ideas to others that we never followed. We think that we are already good without following them.

Often, we need to hit our reset button to clear the filters on a regular basis. Looking back often and identifying our own mistakes is a good way to clear our old thought forms and bias.

First impression matters but, need to allow our mind to reconsider things often to avoid first impression bias.

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