psychology
Anyone who does this appears intelligent at first impression
© Seventyfour / Adobe Stock
First impressions can be important. With this trick you will immediately appear competent to others.
Whether at the company summer party, on a date or in a club, bar, etc., leaving a positive first impression on other people can be worthwhile in many contexts. But what gives a positive impression? Essentially, according to Harvard professor Amy Cuddy, two things: trustworthiness and competence (you can learn more about this in our article ““Other people judge you based on these two questions”). Most people, in turn, associate competence primarily with cognitive abilities, especially intelligence. And researchers from the US have discovered how easy it can be to appear intelligent to other people in the context of a short interaction Harvard and Wharton universities shown in the following experiment.
Experiment shows: Anyone who asks for advice appears intelligent
The participants in the experiment, in this case students, were asked to solve several brain teasers in alternating pairs. The experimenters told some of the students that they would be judged solely based on their performance, i.e. based on the correctness of their solutions. The other part was told that what was important was the impression they made on their partner. All participants in the experiment were able to choose one of three options when interacting in their tandem:
- They could ask the other person for help: “Hey, can you give me some advice?”
- They could say something nice to the other person: “Hey, I hope you did well.”
- They couldn’t say anything.
Of the students who believed they were being judged based on their performance, many chose the first option mentioned: They asked their partner for help. They didn’t care what their team member thought of them, they just wanted to complete the tasks correctly and used every resource available to do so. Of the other group of students who paid attention to the impression they made on the other person, far fewer decided to ask for advice. They wanted to appear capable and competent and therefore showed no signs of insecurity.
What is particularly interesting is the result of the subsequent survey among all participants in the experiment. This is where they should judge their respective partners. Who seemed particularly capable and intelligent to them? Who did they trust less? Those students who asked for advice got off significantly better: the respondents assumed that they were more intelligent than those who behaved neutrally or friendly – even though they had expressly wanted to leave a competent impression.
What’s behind it: transferred sympathy or a positive self-image?
The researchers suspect that there is a typically human perception pattern behind this judgment: Most people consider themselves to be at least relatively smart and competent (students at an American university probably do so a little more than others). That’s why they think that if someone asks them for their opinion or advice, that person must be somewhat smart – after all, that person has recognized their abilities. However, it is also conceivable that we consider people who ask us for advice to be smart because they make us feel good: the feeling of being needed and respected. This makes them likeable to us, and when we like a person, we are more likely to judge them positively and favorably.
Whatever is behind it, the observation from this experiment may well be important for our behavior in social situations: Apparently it doesn’t do any harm if we ask other people for advice, help or their perspective. On the contrary, it can actually have a beneficial effect on the impression we make and make us appear intelligent. However, there will probably be restrictions on the context in which we can ask for advice in order to appear intelligent. The experiment was, after all, a demanding task. If we ask someone whether they would recommend Belgium for a city trip, it may have a negative impact on their image of us.
Sources used: cnbc.com, static1.squarespace.com