Encouraging - Impressions

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions - we can alter the way we thin-slice - by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions. If you are a white person who would like to treat black people as equals in every way - who would like to have a set of associations with blacks that are as positive as those that you have with whites - it requires more than a simple commitment to equality. It requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture, so that when you want to meet, hire, date, or talk with a member of a minority, you aren't betrayed by your hesitation and discomfort. Taking rapid cognition seriously - acknowledging the incredible power, for good and ill, that first impressions play in our lives - requires that we take active steps to manage and control those impressions.

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink (Back Bay Books, NY: NY: 2005), 97-98.