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Saturday Morning News

Hairstyles Make Important First Impressions

Aired February 24, 2001 - 7:25 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Within seconds of meeting you, people form a first impression about you, and a new study shows it's not necessarily your facial features they notice first.

CNN's Jeanne Moos makes the most of what your hair style may be saying about you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Why go to a palm reader when you can have your hair style read instead?

(on camera): You're intelligent and good-natured? Is that true?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, well, I hope so.

MOOS: Actually, dark curly had some of the most negative...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Whoa.

MOOS: You might want to consider a dye job and a straightening.

(voice-over): Instead of just combing her hair, this Yale University social psychologist has been combing through data about hair, specifically the first impression a hair style makes.

DR. MARIANNE LAFRANCE, PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR, YALE UNIVERSITY: The usual assumption is that the twinkle of the eye, the length of the nose, the cleft in the chin actually affects first impressions. But in fact, hair styles totally swamped those effects.

MOOS: Dr. Marianne Lafrance showed test subjects 300 photos of the same people with different hair styles. The subjects rated each photo using adjectives like "polished," "self-centered," "unpleasant." The subjects weren't told they were evaluating hair.

The results, not good for long, dark, curly-haired women.

LAFRANCE: She's not particularly smart, she is not particularly polished.

MOOS: Short-haired women fared better.

LAFRANCE: Smart and confident and outgoing, but also the bottom of the group in terms of sexiness.

MOOS: The sexiest hair, big surprise, was long, straight, and blonde, a la Gwyneth Paltrow, but long-haired guys flopped.

LAFRANCE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) he was seen as less intelligent and less affluent.

MOOS: Short, combed forward, rated sexiest among men.

It figures a company that makes hair products funded this study and offered folks in Grand Central Station free Physique samples if they got their hair style analyzed.

(on camera): I don't know what we're going to do with him.

He certainly was polished, to a shine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got that solar sex panel (ph) thing going on.

MOOS: Short hair with a side part seemed to impart an air of intelligence, not so the middle part, higher insecurity and carelessness. What about the medium-length casual look?

LAFRANCE: This is somebody who's creative, who...

MOOS (on camera): You mean...

LAFRANCE: Well, maybe -- well, do I want to trust you?

MOOS (voice-over): It's enough to make a cameraman afraid to look at his reflection.

LAFRANCE: He's maybe a little careless, perhaps a little lacking in trustworthiness. Certainly not affluent. Intelligent? Well, iffy.

MOOS (voice-over): Iffy? With reviews like that, even free hair products are little consolation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It helps give you lift at the root.

MOOS (on camera): You're going to give this guy a lift at the root?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lift at the root for 20 hours.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I'm going to enjoy it, too.

MOOS (voice-over): Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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