In 1946, Solomon Asch did an experiment in which he created 2 lists of attributes that describe an individual.  After 2 separate groups of people were given either list A or list B, they were given an additional list of attributes and instructed to indicate other qualities an individual might have.  The 2 lists had the same attributes: intelligent, skillful, industrious, determined, practical, and cautious. However list A had one additional attribute: warm, and list B had the additional attribute: cold.

Based on these 2 attributes, each group selected different lists of attributes for the individuals.  List A with the warm attribute chose additional attributes of happy, good-natured, generous, humorous, wise, etc. while List B with the cold attribute chose additional attributes of serious, strong, reliable, persistent, etc.

Other research has confirmed this amazing finding of human perception.   The conclusions to these experiments are as follows:

Perceptions are colored by small pieces of information, which may or may not be correct.

Initial impressions are used to create an overall view of a person.  Knowing a few things, we then fill in the missing pieces in our minds.

We do not form an overall view of someone by painstakingly assembling all of the pieces.

Certain characteristics or attributes are consistently linked together.

Attributes are clustered into various dimension in the minds of most people.

WOW! I am SO thankful that I am an ER doctor as one of my careers.   I get plenty of opportunities to meet total strangers and continue to work on my ability to given them the proper first impression of who I truly am.

I had NO idea that our first impressions are based on so little and often incorrect information, and our perceptions are formed with so little information.

This is further evidence that perception and perspective work in coaching is so life changing because so much of who we are and who we can become is painted by our perceptions, our perspectives, and those around us.