How You React To Eye Contact
A 2015 study from the Academy of Finland found that the way you respond to eye contact can say a lot about your personality. People who tend to avoid eye contact are more likely to be anxious and self-conscious. “Usually, introverts or shy people have issues holding eye contact for a prolonged period of time, especially when they meet someone for the first time or when they are nervous,” Diana Venckunaite, certified life and relationship coach, tells Bustle. “Whereas, extroverts or confident people don’t have issues with eye contact, and can carry on conversations without the need to look away.”
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What You Say About Others
“You can tell a lot by observing someone’s interaction with people around them, especially with people that have lower status or smaller job titles,” Venckunaite says. How someone treats others or what they say about them can tell a lot about the size of their ego, and the amount of respect and compassion they have in them. There’s a really good reason to watch what you say about other people. A 2010 study published in the the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people might judge you based on how you judge other people. If you have a tendency to describe others in positive ways, it shows that you’re likely a happy, kind-hearted, and emotionally stable person.
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Your Facial Features
A person’s past experience, environment, and what they’ve learned can influence how they judge others. As Tzlil Hertzberg, mental health counselor at MyTherapist New York, tells Bustle, “Often, those judgements are untrue, biased and based on very little information, but it is still inherent to how we understand our world.” A 2018 New York University study found that people make snap judgments on facial appearances based on their pre-existing beliefs about others’ personalities. For example, you’re likely to judge people with babyish features as agreeable or harmless because that’s what you’ve been exposed to or learned. It may not be accurate, but it’s instinct. “This instinct ends up constructing and informing our reality and gives us a skewed view of how things are,” Hertzberg says.
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Your Voice
In a 2019 study, researchers from the Université Aix-Marseille and the University of Glasgow, found that people can easily judge your personality based on your voice alone. In the study, participants were told to judge other people for trustworthiness, dominance, and competence, after hearing them say “Hola” or “Hello.” Regardless of the language spoken, participants were able to say that certain voices sounded more aggressive or confident just by hearing one word. They also judged other voices as being more trustworthy and warm.
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Your Physical Appearance
Someone’s physical appearance really shouldn’t matter overall. But a 2009 study found that people do judge personality based on appearance alone. Participants in the study were shown over 100 photographs of people they didn’t know. Some photographs showed people in a controlled pose with a neutral expression, while others were in a naturally expressive pose like smiling. Even when the photographs had someone in a controlled pose, participants were able to accurately judge them for some major personality traits. But when the person in the photo was in a natural pose, participants were able to accurately judge them for nine out of 10 major traits including extraversion, openness, likability, and loneliness.
The important thing to remember here is that people will judge you regardless of what you do. You can’t really control how they perceive you. The only thing you can control is yourself. These are just some small things consider — it’s totally up to you whether you choose to make changes or stay exactly as you are.
