Can you spot a perpetrator on sight?
Launching a new blog has got me thinking about first impressions. But how do they work in safeguarding, and are they helpful or hazardous for DSL's?
Look at the eight faces below. They are all taken from American news stories about convicted criminals. But two of these men were convicted for serious child abuse offences, whilst the other six were convicted for financial crimes like fraud or embezzlement. So, stick your DSL hat on, look at those faces, and see if you can guess which of these are the two child abuse perpetrators…
Got your guesses? I’ll give you the answers in a minute. But the truth is it’s not really your answers I’m interested in. In the scientific integrity stakes, my test is probably somewhere between Jurassic Park and Honey I Shrunk The Kids. But that doesn’t matter, because what I actually want to draw your attention to is how you reacted to being given this challenge. Roughly speaking, I’m guessing that you had one of two responses:
RESPONSE 1: You thought: ‘Great, I’m really good at judging people quickly, I bet I’m going to be able to spot both of them’.
OR
RESPONSE 2: You thought: ‘This is silly, how on earth can you tell something like that from just one photo’
It’s those thoughts which I’m going to be looking at in more detail, because in this piece I want to get us to think twice about first impressions.
You still want the answers? Oh alright, for anyone unable to concentrate until they know how they did, it was the man second in from the left on the top row, and the one in the bottom right hand corner. Now, where were we…
Growing up I feel like I was constantly being lectured on the importance of making a good first impression. These talks usually seemed to revolve around the idea that the only way to a successful job interview was a smart haircut, well ironed shirt and a close shave. (On reflection maybe this advice was targeted specifically at scruffy boys with long hair?). Anyway, the emphasis seemed to be heavily placed on how to make a good first impression. I don’t ever remember anyone talking about how to take a good first impression. So what can we say about that, and how might it apply in a safeguarding context? I’ve been thinking about this - and more importantly listening to what people way smarter than me think about it - and I’ve concluded three things...
Thing 1: We all ‘take’ first impressions of people, and these normally last a long time
If you responded to the test above by thinking that it’s stupid to try and assess someone like that from just one photo, I have a message for you: yes, it is stupid. But unfortunately your brain does it anyway.
There's been lots of studies that suggest that we form first impressions of other people very quickly indeed (like one-tenth of a second quickly the first time we meet someone).
There’s research that’s found that people who’ve spent an hour talking to a stranger will usually still have exactly the same opinion of that person as they had 2 seconds after they first met them.
Or there’s another experiment that found that if you ask students to rate a new lecturer after listening to them talk for just five minutes, their opinions will usually be indistinguishable from their views of that same lecturer hundreds of hours of listening later, at the end of the academic year.
Basically, what these studies show is that your brain loves taking first impressions of people, and then it hates to change its mind about them.
For DSL’s, I’m sure our own thoughts and feelings are just as easily swayed in this way. When I’m reading a concern that's been recorded about a parent, I’m not just reading that information, I’m interpreting it in a way that is heavily influenced by the first impressions I’m carrying around with me. Little things like what the parent or carer was wearing the first time I met them, whether they had an accent, and what they said when I introduced myself and offered them a cup of tea. And that is all going on in my brain, without me realising it, whether I like it or not. So that decision that I make about whether to close the concern or call Dad in for a meeting - a decision which I’ll think was based on my careful and objective analysis of the facts - could just as likely be based on some superficial snap judgements I made two years ago. Oh dear.
Which makes it even more important to remember Thing 2…
Thing 2: First impressions can be very misleading
Speaking personally, my own hunch has always been that I'm not a particularly good judge of character. I've had a few powerful experiences of being wrong about people that have reinforced this view. But maybe it’s not just me…
A fascinating demonstration of how much we can be misled by our first impressions comes from a study conducted by insurance firms in America. When trying to predict which doctors were likely to get sued, they found that the best way to do this was not to analyse the data on how long a doctor had been practising medicine, or how well they'd done at medical school. No, they found that a better way to predict how likely a doctor was to get sued in the future was just to play random people a snippet of that doctor talking, and then ask those people to rate how much they liked the voice. And people’s responses to those little snippets of audio would give you a pretty good guide to the likelihood of the speaker facing legal action from one of their patients in the next five years. Essentially, some voices were just a lot more likely to get sued than others.
I found this research mind-blowing, and yet at the same time somehow also not surprising at all. The conclusion here is certainly not that the average person can tell how competent a doctor is by listening to a clip of them talking. You can’t use how likeable someone’s voice is to predict how likely they are to make mistakes in their medical practice. Instead, what is happening here is that different voices are giving people different impressions (doctors that talk like this come across as likeable and competent, whereas doctors that talk like that come across as blundering or arrogant). And that these impressions turn out to be powerful enough that they form a lasting and trusted picture in the patient’s head, that will significantly influence the chances of them deciding to sue their doctor if something goes wrong further down the line.
It’s easy enough to see how this could apply to DSL’s. Let’s imagine you are trying to decide whether to refer a case to the local MASH. And you’re listing all of the positive and protective factors in one column, and all of the risks and concerns in another one. What this research suggests is that your subconscious will have weighed up whether you like the Mum’s voice, and stuck it on one of those lists. In big capital letters. Without you realising it. Try as we might, I am very sceptical that us DSL’s are able to escape these first impression biases, and I think we can probably assume that very often they are not helpful in determining the likelihood that someone is an abusive or neglectful parent.
Worse still, research also tells us that dishonest and manipulative people can be very good at making a good first impression. Which makes sense, because if you want to take advantage of people or deceive them, it’s very helpful to be able to comes across as trustworthy and decent. Sadly, that is a significant fact for everyone involved in safeguarding to remember. I often hear people in the safeguarding world say “Trust your gut”. Maybe we should say “Listen to your gut, but don’t necessarily trust it”.
Thing 3: We can get to know how our own first impressions work, so that they’re not quite so hazardous
Right, we’ve discovered a big issue: our brains are eager to take first impressions, these might often be mistaken, and they could quite easily make for bad safeguarding. So what are we supposed to do about all of this?
I’ll return to some of the things we can do to improve our assessments and decision making in later pieces. For now though, I think just reflecting on our own first impression habits can be useful. What are the things that you are quick to notice when you get a first impression of someone, and how might these things lead you towards still having too positive or too negative a view of that person six months later? Well, to show you what I mean, here are two mistakes I know I am likely to make when taking first impressions. In one instance, times when I’m overly critical, and the other where I’m probably overly favourable.
Punctuality. Being someone that is obsessed with time, I am a big fan of punctuality. More to the point, I do not like lateness. This means that if someone is late to meet me, I’m pretty sure that I then make far-reaching assumptions about their personality that are probably not justified by the fact that maybe they have just had a bit of bad luck on their way to meet me. I know this because I know some brilliant people who are not very good at being on time. Which I still find annoying, but probably doesn’t deserve the amount of emphasis I put on it. The problem comes if my subconscious brain starts going “I bet they’re up to no good Seth, because they were 20 minutes late the first time you had a meeting with them remember!”.
Sense of humour. On the flip side, I suspect my first impressions of people are probably far too generous if they make me laugh when I first meet them. I put a high premium on a sense of humour, which might make sense when you’re choosing someone to go to the pub with, but probably isn’t so valuable when you’re trying to work out whether someone is a risk to children. What is even worse – and I’m dying a bit inside as I write this – is that what will probably give me an even more positive impression of someone than them making me laugh, is if they laugh at a joke I’ve made! Very embarrassing indeed.
So they’re two of mine. I’m genuinely intrigued to hear some of yours. Simply thinking about them - and then sharing them with someone else - might just make you a bit less susceptible to them. Or at least make me feel a bit better about mine!
Alternatively, you can just message me to brag if you got both of the answers right at the start. In which case I guess you’ve proved that you’re actually amazing at first impressions, and everything I’ve said is a waste of time for someone with your safeguarding greatness. Well done you.
BONUS Thing 4: Think about the first impressions you make
Finally, a bit of a tangent, but here’s one other thought I’ve had on this subject: emails make first impressions too. So when you’re writing an important email, it might be worth putting a bit of extra effort into those first few sentences. For example, if you’re sending an email in which you’re trying to influence a social worker, where possible why not open with some deserved praise. From the bland “Thanks for your update and your ongoing efforts with this case”, to the more personal “It’s great to see the children’s attendance improving recently, which is at least partly down to them having such a committed social worker”. Maybe that first impression charm will make the reader more susceptible to your argument? Worst case scenario you’ve said something nice to someone.