Judging by Appearance

How accurate are judgments regarding other persons based on first impressions? A test of intuitive powers made at an annual conference of the Institute of Personnel Managers in England indicates that even these professionals make very poor snap judgments. For example, after viewing videotapes of 10 persons talking on several subjects, personnel managers generally liked people they viewed as being like themselves, and rated such persons as more intelligent. Yet most such judgments were wrong. “People with university degrees of any kind were no better [at judging] than those without,” noted the report in Psychology Today magazine. And female intuition was dealt a blow, as “men did slightly better overall than women.” We can be very glad that God’s appointed judge of mankind “will not judge by any mere appearance to his eyes, nor reprove simply according to the thing heard by his ears.”​—Isa. 11:3.