
"It's just a distraction," he said. "I want to look in your face, and all I'm seeing is hair going everywhere. So I'm seeing the hair go all over the place instead of just keying in on your eyes."
The man who had given me a three initially said that I looked more "natural" and "approachable" with straight hair.
But as big a difference as the different hair styles made during the experiment, one guy noted that, by itself, hair is not that big of a deal to him.
"As a guy, being a guy my whole life, I can't remember ever sitting around with a bunch of guys saying, 'Oh my God! Look at that girl's hair! I've got to talk to her!'" he said.
I decided to try out the two styles on kids next, because they always tell the truth. So I brought two of the pictures from the earlier experiment with the grumpy guys and asked the kids to run to which one looked prettier.
But just like the guys, 20 out of the 22 kids ran to the picture of me with straight hair.
"You look more better than curly because curly looks all bushy and it's kind of messy and the straight's kind of nice," one child said bluntly.
Well, they sure are honest.
Finally, I went to a place where first impressions are known to be extremely important -- the dreaded job interview.
Tory Johnson, workplace contributor to "Good Morning America," helped me out by setting up a panel of six recruiters who would be asked to grade me as a job candidate on a scale from 1 to 10. The panel would be split into two groups of three, and I would see each with a different hair style.
I wore the same clothes and even answered the same questions the same way. But the recruiters' perceptions? Very different.
Only one recruiter made a passing comment about my hair when it was straight, but all three mentioned it when it was curly.
"I've been in company meetings with people with big hair, and actually I think that it's somewhat of a distraction," one recruiter said.
"I think it was kind of wild," said another.