Impressions on the lecture “First impressions” by Bastian Jaeger

On October 13 first year students of “Applied social psychology” program attended the lecture by assistant prof. Bastian Jaeger on “First impression”.

Bastian Jaeger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology (Organizational Psychology section) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Most of his research focuses on topics in first impressions and decision-making. 

Feedback from our students:

Input from Nana

This lecture was great and very insightful. It opened my eyes to a lot of things about first impressions and I absolutely loved it.

Input from Kseniia

Bastian has a very powerful ability to explain complicated things so that they seem clear and obvious. He also patiently answered all our questions and I really appreciate this approach!

Input from Ghenwa:

The seminar with Bastian was amazing, he has a talent for passing information smoothly and easily. It was very interesting to learn about facial impressions and how they actually affect our daily decisions and judgments. 

He was open to answering questions, which made the seminar more active having such intriguing discussions.

I hope we get to meet him again and learn more from his new studies and discoveries.

Veronikа:

It was a very important seminar both for our research activities and for our daily life. We talked very easily, but informative about the significant notions, such as the first impressions. This is what we rely on making a huge number of decisions. And the price of these solutions is sometimes too high. It was a bright and useful seminar. The first impression of the teacher and the general impression was really very good!

Evgenia:

Never overlook the power of the first impression, that is what I’ve learned from Bastian’s lecture.

A great opportunity to learn from the foreign professors, that was one of the expectations I had about the master’s program in HSE,  and it became real and was totally worth it. 

I loved that Bastian explained the psychological effects on our day-to-day experiences, i.e. that more attractive profile pictures of Airbnb hosts correlate with higher prices on the apartments, and it works because people find the hosts more trustworthy. 

The lecture was very helpful for us as researchers and as people who make first impressions every day. 

Jim:

Bastian's lecture was a pleasure to attend! He did an excellent job explaining relatively complex concepts and experiments in a way that even one without a background in psychology would be able to digest. While also being an extremely entertaining presentation, Bastian's talk elucidated the field of first impressions in a remarkably clear way.

It was a wonderful opportunity to gain some insight into the work currently being carried out in social psychology around the world, and the studies that he highlighted illustrated this perfectly. His responses to the questions fielded showed an outstanding knowledge of the area of study as it stands today and it was a fascinating window into a field that I suspect many of us knew little about prior to the talk. For many, myself included, it was a useful glimpse into the sphere of work that we may find ourselves in the future.

The effort taken by HSE to secure Bastian for the event is hugely appreciated, as it was an invaluable opportunity for us to connect with the research community worldwide.