Face Value

I went home by minibus after giving a talk to the interns last evening. I opened my book shortly after taking the seat, but I confess I was paying more attention to the people around than my book. And conversation of the passengers, in many ways, is about their stories in the hospital.

A couple sitting behind me started their conversation about a young doctor. That young doctor found profoundly offensive the idea that she was being addressed as a nurse - as most people did, I must say. "You know, it's difficult to tell without a closer look," the man said and began to tell his wife how the young doctor quickly corrected his mistake.

"After she returned a stern stare," the man continued, "I froze, sucked in my breath, and quickly called her a doctor. My fault, certainly, but hers too. She looked like a college freshman. Even now. I remember her baby face."

"Absolutely, this teaching hospital is full of green trainees," the wife rhapsodized.

Their story is almost funny - except that it's not. It is symptomatic of all human impressions. There always seems to be something to the snap impressions we form about people's faces. One study at Princeton University, for instance, showed that human inferences of competence based solely on facial appearance predicted the outcomes of congressional elections better than chance. Indeed, the inferences about the competence of politicians occurred within one second of being exposed to their black-and-white photographs. It won't make a centimeter's worth of difference even when people were given more time to think about it; their first impression stuck.