First Impressions: How does the limbic system make that assessment?
By Kaeci Charles UA’26 and Jim Stellar
One important book to us is “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell who talks about first impressions and how they are intuitive judgments. This fits with a theme by Daniel Kaneman that decision making is supported by System 1 (fast, intuitive, always on) and System 2 (deliberative, thoughtful). And fits with a general theme of this blog series that looks at integration of cognitive (neocortical) and emotional (limbic system) processes.
What did you think of me in the first 10 seconds?
In the first 10 seconds I thought of you almost as a storyteller. At the beginning of our meeting, what drew my ears was the story of your family property in Jersey. I also saw your brain. I saw all the information it held and was amazed at your ability to recall certain stories or facts upon a single word cue that had been spoken; and I admire that about you.
Prior to our meeting, I remember not being in the best mood, I was anticipating bad news at the time, and was considering rescheduling because I wanted to be in a better mood before meeting you for the first time. However, within the first 5 minutes of us introducing each other, I found myself in a better mood. We had some things in common, like living in Queens, and being pre-med in undergrad, so I felt a sense of connection early on in our meeting.
I was instantly impressed with how you reacted to me. It was on Zoom so I got to see your face as well as listen to your ideas. You were recommended by a trusted friend and my first thought was “boy is she right in suggesting I talk to you.” So, now let’s dissect what may have happened in that fast interaction in terms of the book Blink mentioned above?
In reading “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, I found myself intrigued with the concept of the fast and frugal conscious strategy used to figure out quick situations. Gladwell brought up an interesting but true point in saying that society puts its trust in decisions that are well thought-through, and have put a sense of prestige in making slow, conscious deliberative, decisions. So if I told friends that I had a good feeling about you after meeting you only one time, I might get some raised eyebrows. Despite this, I had a feeling we would get along great in the upcoming semester. How could I know for sure? I didn’t, but I trusted my gut. Maybe it was our shared interests, or maybe it was the way I was taken with the stories you told, or maybe a combination of things, who knows? But what I did know, was that you and I would have a great time working together this coming fall semester.
I totally agree. One of my other big influences is Danial Khaneman and his book “Thinking Fast and Slow.” While he did not want to be dragged into neuroscience (at least when we talked), he developed a compelling framework of two systems that contribute to decision making. The first he called system 1 and to me it seemed like the limbic system that generates emotions of the kind Gladwell wrote about. In his framework, System 1 is always on, is fast, and becomes a gut-level decision heuristic, like the kind that brought us together. The other system is called System 2 and it is deliberative, slower, cognitive, reflective, and evaluative. It is like me reading the data on a company in which I am thinking of buying their stock. On the other hand, if you and your friends already bought stock in that company, maybe FOMO (fear of missing out) and am already leaning with my system 1 to make that purchase.
In reflecting on our first conversation, it’s become clear to me that our System 1’s were in full gear during our first interaction over zoom. System 1 helped determine whether you would like me to work with you, and helped me determine if I would want to work with you. We built a quick trust of each other. One important hormone involved in building trust is oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone released that can increase bonding and is also seen to regulate behavior, especially positive social interactions. It might be surprising for one to hear me say oxytocin was involved in our first interaction because oxytocin is mainly associated with being secreted when a mother is feeding her child to aid in bonding between the two, however studies have shown that oxytocin can also aid in social attachment and trust in humans. In initially meeting on zoom, seeing each other’s faces helped with non-verbal communication cues that bounced between us to help build that trust led by System 1. We know the limbic system plays a major role in behavior processing, so through some connection in my brain, oxytocin was being used to communicate to my limbic system to say ‘hey , based on some positive nonverbal communication, you can trust this guy’.
Oxytocin is an interesting mechanism to study in the brain and particularly how that it works in a mentoring-mentee relationship to amplify learning.
Clearly faculty have the knowledge in the academy. But students are the ones who will apply whatever facts and theories they learned to the future. The main impact of that application may be in the value judgments applied to that knowledge. Some call that critical thinking and it can come from the knowledge itself, but we think it also comes from humans interacting from professor-stuent connection, particularly in mentoring. This may be the subject of our next blog.
