In the time before I turned 40 but after my marriage broke up, it occurred to me that a guy’s chances of getting into a romantic relationship with an available woman are usually determined within the first two or three seconds after meeting. After years of rough experience, I finally noticed that some women just plain like you from the first moment they see you; and some really dislike you. Actually, most are more-or-less neutral.

Still, if you want to get a relationship going, your best chances were with the first group. The second group would be a waste of time, no matter how much you otherwise had in common, and no matter how much you might feel attracted to someone who just doesn’t like your look. The third group is not impossible, but it takes a lot of work. And it keeps on taking a lot of work. If you get a relationship going with someone from the neutral zone, it could fall apart as soon as you start feeling secure enough to stop buying flowers and writing love notes every day (and try to get a night or two in with your old friends).

It also occurred to me that there is really no rhyme or reason as to how the three groups break down. Women who seemed totally not-my-type, who had nothing in common with me, sometimes fell into the attraction group. (OK, I am an honest if not rudely handsome man; I will admit that there are not hundreds and hundreds of women like that out there). And yet women with everything in common too often fall into the immediate dislike group. There is something unexplainable that happens in that first second or two of observation. Over the years, there have been a fair number of not-so-beautiful women in my attraction group; but surprisingly, there were some real beauties too (but of course there weren’t very many, and I always messed things up in the end with them). Furthermore, some of the “fan club” have included women of different ethnicities and race. Whatever this factor is, it’s an equal opportunity factor.

Eventually I extended the theory to other parts of life; low and behold, it seemed to work beyond the realm of dating and mating. It seemed to apply with people of all ages, both men and women (albeit on a non-sexual basis). It seemed to apply to job interviews (usually to my disadvantage). Some people just like you at first, and others shun you, without any rational reason other than “an inner hunch”. There’s a guy at work who just didn’t like me from day 1; I picked that up pretty quickly and so I didn’t waste any energy trying to be his friend. But after six years, the guy finally seems to be lightening up. He seems to have decided that I’m not quite the creep that his gut feelings made me out to be. Nonetheless, it took six years and the fact that some of his friends have been getting along with me just fine to change his mind; that’s how strong this ‘immediate judgment’ factor is. (It also works on in the other way too; if you ignore one of your natural fans, they may eventually turn against you, but that also takes quite a while).

I’ve noticed that the world of real science is starting to pick up on the “first sight” factor. There have been a couple of articles lately about the research of a psychologist named Nalini Ambady. One study indicated that a group of people looking at pictures of strangers could correctly guess the person’s sexual orientation (gay or straight) with surprising success, significantly higher than 50-50. Another similar study indicated that successful business leaders have a certain look that can be picked out, and that correlates with the financial success of their firms. Again, a group of average people looking at a stack of pictures could pick out those who were gay or were successful leaders with fairly good accuracy and agreement. An older study by Ambady indicated that college students decide whether they are going to like or dislike a professor in the first second that they see them. The initial impression was shown to carry right thru to the end of the semester.

There’s an old name for this field of study: physiognomy. Actually, physiognomy is considered junk science or “folk science” at best. But the work of Ambady and some others is showing that there may be something to the “immediate judgement” factor. There are actually two different questions raised by physiognomy: FIRST, just how strongly do people prejudice their judgments about another person based on the first look; and SECOND, are they right about their initial feelings? The research seems to indicate that people really do “read a book by its cover”, as my past experiences tend to indicate. (So I’m not 100% crazy after all).

But as to the SECOND question — that issue is still up in the air. We have three examples: being gay, being a good business leader, and being a good professor. Assuming that a random group of people tend to agree on first sight that person X looks like she’s gay or would be a good business leader, or would make a good teacher, does that mean that the face and the body actually reflect mental abilities and personality temperaments? OR, as I suspect, is it more the case that a person “floats to the top” in business or academia because the majority of people THINK she or he will be a good executive or teacher? Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Even with the gay situation, which we increasingly believe to be a function of nature and not nurture, one has to wonder if a child’s sexuality is partly shaped by what people around him or her sub-consciously think about him or her. (In other words, sexual preference may be shaped as much by social – genetic factors as by direct genetic determinants of behavior).

Well, in a way this depresses me. We seem to think that every child can become whatever she or he wants to become; it’s a very American notion. (And likewise, we blame every adult who doesn’t achieve their dreams; just didn’t have the fire inside.) And yet, maybe we’re all locked onto certain pathways in life because of a social judgment processes based upon the unalterable appearances of our body. Even if you have the interest and the strength and the mind to become an astronaut, if you don’t have the look (and the right opportunities, which may be a function of the right look), then you ain’t gonna make it. The “right stuff” needs the right look. Sure, not everyone can be a singer or an athlete or a senator or a great intellect; but everyone is good at something. Whatever that good is, for it to become truly GREAT may depend on how one’s nose is placed relative to their eyeline and upper lip, most ironically.

And as to the whole dating thing: you can find someone who shares your every interest, and whom you find very attractive; and yet, if that person just doesn’t feel the tingle at the start, then you’re probably never going to be more than good friends. The woman who is actually interested in you is going to have a totally different look from what you dig, and she finds most of your interests to be trivial. She may not like your style. And yet, she’s ready to be asked out to dinner. (Unless, of course, you’re an NFL quarterback or screen actor in your mid-20s, and you have your choice of all kinds of women.) Life is a roll of the dice. Some people get lucky and find their soul mates, i.e., someone with common interests who is attracted to you as much as you are to her. And some people just don’t.

No matter what the shrinks try to tell you, too often the losers and neurotics of the world actually ARE unlucky — just plain unlucky. The physiognomy thing tends to affirm that there isn’t all that much substantive difference between those with much achievement and fame (or even just basic happiness), and those who die as discontented nobodies.

I’ve been watching the Ken Burns series on WW2 lately (“The War”, on PBS TV). It definitely is powerful. Burns is trying to show you what that war was like from two perspectives – from the homefront and from the front lines. The homefront stuff is interesting; it shows how life had changed in four typical American towns because of WW2. So far, our modern war on terrorism hasn’t changed our daily life in America too much, aside from the increased security irritants (e.g., more paperwork to get a drivers license, more airport check-in procedures, more metal scanners at office buildings, etc.). But WW2 definitely made a big change relative to the way that things were in the 1930’s, during the Great Depression. In some ways things got better because of the war, in some ways things got worse, but they definitely were different.

Again, that’s all quite interesting. But Burns goes for the gut when he turns to the war front. He wants you to imagine what it was like to be in a cold mudhole getting shot at, or up in a bomber plane over France with an engine on fire, or on a Navy ship in the Pacific with a kamikaze plane diving in at you. He wants you to know that war is in no way fun. It’s gruesome work done in awful conditions. He wants you to imagine the blood and screams when the guy next to you gets his face blown off by shrapnel. He wants you to know about field amputations for gangrene. He wants you to imagine being alone in the Pacific Ocean without a lifeboat, watching the last remains of your burning destroyer ship sinking under the waterline.

I have had some trouble sleeping after watching all this. One way to feel better is to lionize these men, think about all the sacrifice they made for their nation and their fellow soldiers and sailors. Praise them for their great love of country and their incredible bonding with the other guys in the trenches. In other words, try to think about how some of the best human behavior shines through the awfulness of it all. E.g., Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation”.

I just read an article in the Atlantic that makes me ponder how war paradoxically brings out the best in people. Olivia Judson wrote a somewhat optimistic article called “The Selfless Gene”, surveying various studies indicating that humans have inherited from their ape ancestors an instinct to cooperate with and even sacrifice for the group they belong to. Ms. Judson concludes that this instinct can be directed by human intelligence to make things better for us. But there is a dark side, which Ms. Judson alludes to in the middle of her article. She says that the “inherent selflessness” of humans may well have developed as a tactic of war. Charles Darwin himself hypothesized that because of all the warfare that goes on between groups of apes (and humans), the groups that cooperate the most (to the point of self-sacrifice to save the group) will do better than groups where everyone is out to save their own behind. The former groups will usually beat the latter groups, and given the deadly nature of warfare, this means that more people willing to sacrifice themselves for the group will have children than the folk who didn’t want to.

Ms. Judson then reviews a number of formal scientific studies that confirm this Darwinian theory. And from that she draws a sunny conclusion. But after watching the Burns series on war, I draw a much less optimistic conclusion. All this willingness to suffer and die for one’s country and one’s fellow soldier is great, on one level. But on a higher level, it assumes that we are always going to form groups (based on nationality, religion, race, ideology, whatever) and make war against each other. That is also in our genes. The theory espoused by humanists and religious idealists that humankind is one big family that shouldn’t fight amidst itself never gains traction.

Living in peace appears to go against our nature. There have been a few short periods in human history where there wasn’t much warfare going on. The 20th Century, and now the early 21st Century, hardly had any such periods. But even when there was relative calm throughout the world, just a few changes in weather or technology or ideology got one group upset with another, and the bang-bang started all over again. It doesn’t take much to get this species marching its sons off to the battlefield. And it doesn’t take much to convince them that they put their lives on the line. We get talked into war so easily. Again, it seems to be in our genes.

Humans are the one species that can appreciate the notion “it doesn’t have to be this way”. Once in a blue moon, humanity does go against its nature when intelligence indicates a better way. But with regard to warfare, I don’t see much willingness to question it anywhere in the world. And that’s not good, given all the mega-problems that are now brewing (global warming, nuclear proliferation, oil shortages, religious fundamentalism, unregulated global capitalism, etc.).

I’m not going to be alive to see the year 2100 come in (not even the 2050 mid-point). But I hope it all somehow turns out OK for today’s kids, who possibly will. I hope that future Ken Burns’ won’t have to keep making documentaries like “The War”.