‘Drab clothes made me invisible at work – I’ve since discovered how to dress for success’

Baroness Helena Morrissey is a member of the House of Lords, who has worked in financial services for more than 30 years, starting at Schroders. She has nine children and writes about balancing parenting with a career, while also campaigning for women’s financial equality. She founded the 30% Club, which has increased representation of women on UK corporate boards, and now chairs the Diversity Project, which seeks to attract diverse talent in the investment industry.
Baroness Morrissey writes:

We’re all told not to “judge a book by its cover”, but we’re programmed to make snap judgements when meeting someone for the first time. Psychologists at Princeton University found it takes us just a tenth of a second to form an impression of a stranger’s competence, likeability and trustworthiness – from their appearance alone.

We’re not choosing to be superficial; as Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains in his seminal work, Thinking, Fast and Slow, most of our thinking is done “fast”, just to be able to get on with our lives. We’re bombarded with new information and encounter new people every day, so mental shortcuts are a necessity.

And it’s hard to change those first impressions. A Cornell University study showed that if people form initial judgements about someone based on a single photo, any negative views (they look unfriendly, for example) will persist six months later – even if they have since met the person. Even after having “read the book”, we still judge it by its cover.

Read Baroness Helena Morrissey's full article at The Telegraph online.

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