Paper Details

First impressions formed within moments of encountering others serve as cognitive shortcuts that significantly influence interpersonal trajectories across professional, social, and clinical domains. This critical review synthesizes empirical literature from 2015 to 2025 examining how nonverbal cues shape initial social evaluations in face-to-face interactions. By analysing methodologically diverse studies, we identify facial expressiveness as the nonverbal determinant of favorable first impressions, with increased expressiveness consistently correlating with higher ratings of warmth, likability, and trustworthiness. Studies also show that when people's body language, facial expressions, and voice work together smoothly, others understand them better. When some cues are hidden, like when wearing a mask, people focus more on visible cues like the eyes. Reduced facial expression, especially in people with mental health conditions, leads to more negative first impressions. These nonverbal effects also happen over video calls, which is important in today's digital world. This review highlights three main insights: Facial expressions are the most important nonverbal cue; Nonverbal cues work better together than alone; Surprisingly, hiding some cues can actually improve first impressions by drawing attention to the most important ones. These findings can help improve therapy, job training, online meeting tools, and social skills programs. Methodological limitations in current research include overemphasis on facial cues at the expense of other nonverbal channels, heterogeneous methodologies complicating cross-study comparison, and insufficient attention to cultural moderators. Future research should study how different nonverbal cues work together, track how first impressions change over time, and examine how digital communication affects these signals. This review helps improve how people communicate and shows what still needs to be studied.

First impressions, Nonverbal communication, Facial expressions, Social perception, Impression formation, Interpersonal communication