Who is getting the job?

This is one you can either thank or blame your parents for. A 2018 study found that your first name can influence how others judge your personality, age, and competency. Researchers from Syracuse University conducted a study of 500 college students and asked them to rate popular names. As they found, female names were more associated with warmth than competence. Male names were found to be the opposite. Names like Dolores or Donald were also considered to be "older" than names like Danielle or Devon. Names that were found to be both highly competent and warm included Anna, Caroline, Elizabeth, John, and Matthew. Of course if people had negative experiences with a certain name, they were more likely to rate them more negatively.

A 2015 study from the Academy of Finland found that the way you respond to eye contact can say a lot about your personality. People who tend to avoid eye contact are more likely to be anxious and self-conscious. "Usually, introverts or shy people have issues holding eye contact for a prolonged period of time, especially when they meet someone for the first time or when they are nervous," Diana Venckunaite, certified life and relationship coach, tells Bustle. "Whereas, extroverts or confident people don't have issues with eye contact, and can carry on conversations without the need to look away."

"You can tell a lot by observing someone's interaction with people around them, especially with people that have lower status or smaller job titles," Venckunaite says. How someone treats others or what they say about them can tell a lot about the size of their ego, and the amount of respect and compassion they have in them. There's a really good reason to watch what you say about other people. A 2010 study published in the the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people might judge you based on how you judge other people. If you have a tendency to describe others in positive ways, it shows that you're likely a happy, kind-hearted, and emotionally stable person.

A person's past experience, environment, and what they've learned can influence how they judge others. As Tzlil Hertzberg, mental health counselor at MyTherapist New York, tells Bustle, "Often, those judgements are untrue, biased and based on very little information, but it is still inherent to how we understand our world." A 2018 New York University study found that people make snap judgments on facial appearances based on their pre-existing beliefs about others' personalities. For example, you're likely to judge people with babyish features as agreeable or harmless because that's what you've been exposed to or learned. It may not be accurate, but it's instinct. "This instinct ends up constructing and informing our reality and gives us a skewed view of how things are," Hertzberg says.

In a 2019 study, researchers from the Université Aix-Marseille and the University of Glasgow, found that people can easily judge your personality based on your voice alone. In the study, participants were told to judge other people for trustworthiness, dominance, and competence, after hearing them say "Hola" or "Hello." Regardless of the language spoken, participants were able to say that certain voices sounded more aggressive or confident just by hearing one word. They also judged other voices as being more trustworthy and warm.