Conventional wisdom holds that people are easily seduced by first impressions, and there's solid scientific evidence that initial snap judgments are hard to shake—even when they turn out to be inaccurate. But according to a new study, sleeping on it can help us avoid judging a book solely by its cover. In research published Sept.
9 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , a team of researchers at Duke University started with an age-old question: Is it better to start strong with a good first impression, or end on a good note? To shed some light on the issue, they did a study involving an imaginary garage sale. In a series of experiments conducted online, the researchers asked participants to look through virtual boxes of unwanted goods for items to include in the sale. Most of the items inside each box weren't worth much—an old alarm clock, for example, or a potted plant.
A few special objects, like a nice lamp or a teddy bear, were worth more. The participants earned real cash based on the boxes they chose, so they were motivated to figure out which boxes were most valuable. Unbeknownst to the participants, however, the combined total value of the 20 items in each box was the same.
It was the sequence of the "junk" versus the "gems" that varied. In some of the boxes, all the valuable items were on top, so as the participants unpacked the box they spotted those items first. Other boxes had their valuable items clustered in the middle or at the bottom, and in s.