You can judge a face in a fraction of a second. That doesn’t mean the judgment is right.

Snap judgments are fast because they are cheap. Your brain hands you a verdict on a face before you could possibly have thought about it, built out of almost nothing, and the speed is what makes it feel like insight. It feels like knowing and performs about as well as a guess.

Catch the first verdict next time you meet somebody and label it a guess rather than a read. Give yourself a second encounter before deciding anything. Keep a quiet count of how often the guess turned out wrong.