First Impressions and The Stoic Mind, or: The Virtue of Second Guessing
We’ve all received that message, that email—the one that makes our stomach drop and our emotions flare
“Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it: ‘Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.”
On the night of September 26th, 1983, a strange red light began to blink on a console belonging to an early-warning system in a bunker in the Kaluga Oblast, Russia. Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet lieutenant colonel stationed that night at Serpukhov-15 would have sat up from his otherwise sleepy shift, intent on investigating the source of the alert. When he did, he saw that the system was reporting a single incoming missile, launched from the United States. Moments later, four more were apparently on their way. According to Soviet nuclear doctrine, this was grounds for an immediate retaliatory strike. Petrov, however, decided to stop, and to think.
To run with his first impression—that the evil Americans had finally seized the initiative in the latter years of this Cold War—would likely have meant the triggering of World War III. Instead, Petrov did as Epictetus suggested: he put his impression to the test. A veteran of the conflict, Petrov had experienced oscillating tensions between the two great superpowers his entire career, and understood that the moment in which they lived, said tensions were relatively low. He also found himself doubtful of the system's readings—if the Americans had truly decided to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike, surely they would be aimed at neutralisation. Why, then, had they only launched five missiles?
Petrov followed his instinct, and with no physical evidence to back up his claim he reported the reading as a false alarm. To have been wrong would have put his homeland on the back-foot at the beginning of an incipient global conflict, and would likely have resulted in his own execution. To be right, the evasion of nuclear disaster. It later transpired that the readings on the console had been triggered by a system malfunction, in which sunlight reflecting off of the bottom of high-flying clouds was read as missile launches. Stanislav Petrov declined to immediately react to his first impression—that the world was falling down. He challenged not only his own judgement, but that of the system, refused to give in to his emotions, and leveraged his trusted reason to refine that which he understood was happening. The teachings of the ancient Stoics flowed through him in that moment, and as a result, he single-handedly prevented the end of the world as we know it.
Admittedly, the stakes are typically much lower when each of us comes face to face with our own first impressions. If I lose my temper, there’s little risk of a cascading series of events resulting in the next global conflict (although I’m sure there’s a non-zero chance). We would still be wise to draw on the brave example of Petrov, and on the teachings of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, so we may develop the instinct to question that first reading we so often lose ourselves to—especially in a world so set on cutting us to the quick at every opportunity.
As our understanding of neuroscience has grown, we’ve learned that humans can make social judgments in as little as 100 milliseconds after seeing someone’s face—meaning that despite all guidance to the contrary, we still can’t help but judge books by their covers. When assessing a situation, different parts of the brain—namely and mainly the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex—operate a process that leverages emotion, fear, threat detection, body language, tone of voice and facial expression; it funnels all of this data through a complicated mesh of biases and heuristics (not to mention millennia of hunter-gatherer-focused evolutionary traits and genetic inheritance) to help us determine what we should be thinking and feeling. To make matters worse, our first impressions tend to be subject to confirmation bias, meaning that they are notoriously resistant to correction, even in the face of contradictory evidence. This was very useful on the plains of the Serengeti, when recognising the shape of a big cat as quickly as possible meant the difference between life and death—not so in our modern world of office space and online presence.
“Impressions, at least, are not under your control; but the act of assent is.”
The Stoics referred to the results of this process as our phantasiai—our impressions, our perceptions. They recognised, even then, that these phantasiai were something which we had no control over (perhaps what we now understand as a biological imperative, they believed to be a spiritual one). Turning then towards what was in their control, they sought instead to master their reactions to these initial impressions, and whether or not we assent to them.
Assenting, in this instance, simply means accepting that our first impressions are the cold, hard truth. This is not to say that this might not be the case—sometimes our first impressions are all too accurate—but the essence of self-governance is the ability to insert judgement between our perceptions, and our reactions. This is the discipline that the Stoics call for—the withholding of judgement until our impressions are fully evaluated and tested, and only then accepting or acting upon our accurate assessment of them. The purpose of this process, I must point out, is largely to help us to react to the world in ways that are productive and positive, but also to help us protect our own inner peace. So what, then, are the dangers of giving in to our phantasiai, of allowing our first impressions to rule supreme?
A couple of days ago, I was out with my dog on a short, afternoon walk around our estate. We rounded a corner, and much to our surprise we came face to face with Milly’s life-long arch-nemesis—another random dog. Milly is quite reactive, and predictably, she reacted. Lunging and barking, she assented to her own phantasiai—the initial impression warning her of the potential threat posed by the sudden appearance of this canine counterpart. The kernel of the lesson here rests not in her behaviour, however, but in my own. Having spent much time working with her to try to curb this reactivity, I found myself frustrated and disappointed in her for what I perceived as a backslide, and in myself for my notional failure to prevent it. I spent the rest of our walk in the glorious sunshine a grumpy miser, and it wasn’t until later that I came around to the error of my ways. How simple it would have been for me to pause, to think; to acknowledge that when we rounded the corner we came upon the other dog near face-to-face, forcing Milly into a fight-or-flight scenario; to understand and accept her for who she is, and where she rests on her own journey as a creature of this earth; to respect her instincts, and the same biological driving forces that can sometimes take control of us as humans.
The wise ruler surveying her kingdom
Fortunately for both of us, the impact of our communal failure to examine our phantasiai is relatively negligible. I might spend the next short period of time frustrated and contemplative about where we went wrong, but this harms no one but myself. Milly will continue on in blissful ignorance, acknowledging my short-lived vexation with a casual side-eye until the next evil canine rounds a corner and enters her space—at which point she will likely repeat the process once more. Some instances, however, are not so harmless. We see it happen in the workplace, where the need to prove ourselves as competent and capable can result in rapid assent to our negative first impressions, often resulting in needless conflict that might have been avoided. We see it in everyday bigotry, where individuals are written off based on their gender, sexuality, the colour of their skin, where they’re from, or the spiritual beliefs they hold. As always, we find countless examples of the dangers of believing our first impressions in the annals of history: Neville Chamberlain believed that a piece of paper was enough to ensure peace between Great Britain and Nazi Germany in the lead-up to World War II; Julius Caesar’s impression was that he was invulnerable, that the Senate was hobbled—this resulted in his assassination at the hands of the very people he looked down upon; The Trojans assented to their impression of the wooden horse gifted to them by the Greeks, which led to the sacking of their city.
To break it down to brass tacks, it’s a simple process of Acknowledge, Suspend, Evaluate, and Assent. We must acknowledge and accept the fact that we are experiencing an intense, uncontrollable, unconscious reaction to external stimuli. We must remind ourselves, however, that our conscious reaction is within our control. We do this by suspending our judgement of the stimuli. The Stoics and Skeptics called this the moment of epoché—the calm, mindful pause. We should then evaluate this impression through a Stoic lens: am I justified in feeling this way? Is it within my power to change or control? Am I being influenced by external factors, emotions, or habits? Would this be a virtuous reaction? Based on your findings, you might then decide to assent to your initial impression, or perhaps you’ll decide that the situation doesn’t call for the reaction you had in mind, and the process you just undertook has enabled you to see it from a new perspective.
“So keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, unpretentious, a friend of justice, god-fearing, kind, full of affection, strong for your proper work. Strive hard to remain the same person you were resolved to be. ”
Of course, there is always the risk that we move towards the other extreme: the dreaded analysis paralysis. We’ve all been there—a decision needs to be made, and yet we tarry, wracked with uncertainty around the options before us. Though existing on the opposite end of the spectrum to assent, this delaying of action is itself a vice, just as giving in to our initial baser instincts is. This type of indecision is typically rooted in fear—fear of judgement, fear of failure, fear of regret—and flies in the face of a core tenet and virtue of Stoicism: namely, courage. Even in the face of uncertainty, of loss and hardship, of potential ruination, we must find that courage within ourselves to take the action that’s in line with our values and principles. Worse still, dilly-dallying wastes time, which, as practitioners of Stoic philosophy, we understand to be our most valuable commodity, and truly the one finite resource which we have in our possession. In the hopes of avoiding regret, it’s all too easy to slip into a life filled with it. Like many things in this world of ours—it is simply about finding a balance.
Of course, all of this is far easier to preach than it is to practise. It is by no means a switch we flip, and it’s plain to see from my example above that the person whose words you’re reading has allowed his first impressions to take hold, and there is no doubt in my mind that it will happen again. But that is the whole point of acknowledging that we are forever South of Reason—it helps us remember that although we’ll never get there, we have to strive to reach it every day; to be just a little bit better, every day. I know I’ll be more conscious of my first impressions on our next walk—and I expect Milly to be all the happier for it.