Nursing faculty strive to improve their students’ professional and practical competencies to provide the best quality education (Labrague et al., 2020). As such, they must interact with their students, starting from the first encounter with them; this vital interaction that occurs is considered the instructional core, and as it establishes the basis of learning, it is thought to be the best step to improve student learning (Kim & Lundberg, 2016). Such interaction, relationship, and expectation may be affected by the faculty's impression of students. First impressions are judgments made about people we do not know that are formed quickly (typically within the first 60 seconds of meeting someone) and on the basis of very little information, using little cognitive awareness (Wood et al., 2017). The first impression is the early perception and formation of thoughts about another (Rule & Ambady, 2008).

First impressions occur on the first day of school, and educators may form permanent expectations from this first experience (Gage, 2017). First impressions are based on inferences made about others based on a brief glimpse of a person's behavior that provides information about personality, affect, and interpersonal relationships (Ambady, 2010). According to Gage's (2017) study, educators’ expectations are affected by student characteristics, such as social class, gender, and stereotypes. The consequences of formed expectations by educators can have a supporting effect on the student's academic performance or the opposite (Gage, 2017). Concerning accuracy, Biesanz et al. (2011) found that people are generally aware of situations in which their first impressions are a more accurate reflection of the reality. This is supported by Wood (2014) who asserted that people are aware when first impression judgments are accurate even if they are unsure as to whether their judgment is accurate or not. However, the degree to which first impressions may influence later judgments is an area that has not been considered in previous literature (Wood, 2014).

Few studies have mentioned that first impressions might influence later judgments even after exposure to contradictions (Samudra et al., 2016; Weisbuch et al., 2010). The expectations, which people may build from their initial impressions, influence their interpretation of later events, leading them to favor, remember, or selectively gather information consistent with their initial beliefs (Rosenzweig, 2014). Negative first impressions make educators significantly less likely to over-rate their students, but not more likely to under-rate student performance (Samudra et al., 2016). Students consider the first impressions that educators had made of them as uncivil - something becoming increasingly common in universities. Such behaviors are not only discouraging for instructors but may also negatively influence other students in the class as well (Yrisarry et al., 2019).

The role of first impressions on nursing students and the influence they may have on education has not been well studied. There has been little attention given to the formation of the first impressions made by nursing educators as a means of expectation development, and the role of those expectations in student performance has found similar negligence in the academic community. As indicated in a number of earlier studies, educators' perceptions can influence grading patterns and academic grading either positively or negatively (Samudra et al., 2016; Wood, 2014; Wood et al., 2017). Consequently, it is vital to investigate the effects of first impressions on faculty and students in nursing education. No recent studies investigating this issue in nursing education were found. According to our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate this topic in Jordan, as well as the entire Middle East, which justifies the significance of conducting this study. As such, this study sought to investigate the impacts of first impressions on nursing education in Jordan from both the educator and the student's perspective.