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A guy with a twisted sense of humor explains how your brain is quicker to judge than your eyes

You know that saying "You never get a second chance to make a first impression?"

trustworthiness, first impressions, DNews

via DNews/YouTube

Who's more trustworthy?

This article originally appeared on 10.18.14

William Haynes wants to talk to you about your brain.

He's a comedian for SourceFed, and he's got kind of a strange, dark sense of humor.

So when he was invited to host an episode of Discovery's "DNews" about the science of first impressions, we knew it was going to be awesome.

Here's what he had to say.

Your brain can decide how trustworthy a person is just by getting a split-second look at their face.

education, research, first impressions, facial recognition

That’s pretty cool... and scary.

via DNews/YouTube

GIFs from "DNews."

Researchers, in a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that our brains help us form all kinds of spontaneous judgments of people that we may not even be aware of, including whether we can trust them.

It's all thanks to the amygdala, the walnut-shaped area of the brain that helps us process strong emotions.

amygdala, neuroscience, studies, brain

Are we programmed to react without knowing it?

via DNews/YouTube

In the study, two groups of participants were analyzed. The first group was asked to rate how much they trusted certain people by looking at their faces while the researchers measured activity in the amygdala. Simple enough.

The second group was asked to lay inside an MRI machine while faces flashed on a screen in front of them. But here's the catch: The faces appeared and disappeared so quickly that the people in this group couldn't even really see them.

Here's what the study found.

Regardless of whether you get a long look at someone's face or only a glance, your amygdala lights up like crazy.

What's even cooler is that participants in the study pretty much agreed on which faces were trustworthy and which ones weren't.

There were certain traits that stood out as shady, like furrowed eyebrows and shallow cheekbones, in particular.

first impression, judgement, testing, agreeable

What is the science behind a first impression?

via DNews/YouTube

This only begins to scratch the surface of the super-awesome science behind first impressions.

Did you know that a person's voice can have a similar effect on perception, even in small doses?

After testing a group of 64 people, researchers in Scotland found that participants were consistently able to agree on which personality traits corresponded to which voices they heard — based solely on hearing them speak the word "hello."

The biggest remaining question is whether these snap judgments have a measurable impact on our behavior.

A study by Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal found something pretty interesting.

According to Lifehacker, the two compared "the ratings given to college professors by classes at the end of the semester with ratings that another group of students gave the same professors based only on three ten-second silent video clips shown prior to any actual lectures."

The two groups mostly agreed on how much they liked the professors, indicating that, just maybe, first impressions really do matter.

Watch the full episode of "DNews" to learn more about cool brain stuff and catch William Haynes' killer one-liners below:

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via MyHeritage

David Rossler returns to the place where he hid from the Nazis during World War II.

David Rossler, 84, and his mother were taken in by Georges Bourlet and his four young adult children in 1944 and allowed to hide in their home in Brussels in the waning months of World War II. Rossler and his mother were Jewish, and Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany. If caught, they’d be taken to a concentration camp.

Rossler had already lost his uncle and grandfather after they were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland and he would lose his father, hiding elsewhere, to an illness.

Bourlet and his family were also in danger if they were caught hiding the mother and child from the Nazis. "People who protected Jews were simply risking their lives. You wouldn't end up in jail, but in Auschwitz—and Auschwitz, you didn't end up anywhere but in the crematoria," Rossler said in a video produced by MyHeritage.com.

After Allied forces liberated Belgium in 1945, Rossler, who was born Daniel Langa and later took the name of his stepfather, moved to Austria and lost touch with the Bourlets.

As Rossler entered his 80s and was in declining health, his final wish was to thank Bourlet’s family for the incredible bravery and humanity he showed him and his mother during the war.

For years, Lionel Rossler, David’s son, did everything he could to find the family, including putting ads in the paper and posting on social media. After one such post, he received a message from Marie Cappart, country manager for MyHeritage in Belgium, who wanted to help.

MyHeritage is an online genealogy platform with 90 million family trees. Rossler's story hit close to home with Cappart.

"My husband lost his grandfather during the war. He died at the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau," Cappart told Newsweek. "My own great-grandmother also died in the camp at Ravensbrück. She was British and was in Belgium as part of the resistance. Sadly she was caught by the Nazis and deported. She never came back."

\u201cDavid Rossler, center, with members of the Bourlet family. A Belgian genealogist recently helped the 83-year-old man reunite with the family that saved him and his mother during World War II.\n\nhttps://t.co/CVWQ3SLbH0\u201d
— Stephen Uzzell (@Stephen Uzzell) 1653404305

“After browsing records and cross-referencing data, Cappart found an Anne-Marie Bourlet, born in Auderghem in 1929,” Lionel said, according to SWNS. “She discovered that Anne-Marie married someone with the surname Dedoncker and had five children—all of them possibly still alive.”

“After a bit more research, Cappart found Xavier, one of Georges Bourlet’s grandsons, and managed to contact him,” he continued.

Finally, after 75 years, David Rossler returned to the place where he hid in 1944 and 1945 and thanked Bourlet’s five grandchildren.

\u201cA man has returned to the home he and his mother hid in from the Nazis nearly 80 years ago - while his uncle and grandad died in Auschwitz. David Rossler, 85, was just five years old when he and his mother, Haja Sura Zoltak, were hidden by the Bourlet\n\nhttps://t.co/jmFZsupNaJ\u201d
— Times of Bristol (@Times of Bristol) 1675784891

“It was an incredibly emotional day for us,” Lionel explained. “I was able to see, with my own eyes, the place where my father was kept safe from the Germans all those years ago.”

“If I had Mr. Bourlet in front of me, I would want to kiss him,” said David. “To say thank you with all my body, with all my life, I am alive, I have a family of which I am very, very, very proud. To tell him that my life is thanks to him.”

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“Because of his heroic action, Georges was able to save the lives of my father and grandmother,” Lionel said. “Nine people were saved thanks to what he did; my brother, myself and our children would not be here today if not for his courage and kindness.”

As a final “thank you” to Bourlet and his family, the Rosslers want him to be recognized as Righteous Among The Nations at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. This honor is for non-Jews who risked everything during the Holocaust to save Jewish people.

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