PI personality - how do you even know?

[zhtmahtm]

I'm trying to decide between two programs, either one would be a great choice in terms of research/program/funding/living environment etc. The main difference in two schools are the PIs' personalities and advising styles, and although I've met and talked to both PIs and their students I can't really see how either choice is going to turn out, primarily because my impression and what other faculty/students tell me were opposite.

PI A: big name, reputation among students/faculty to be very clever and nice/caring. However, during school visit, I felt like the conversation kept on breaking off and it got awkward quite often (at least for me, I don't know how he thought of me).

PI B: renowned but less than PI A, students told me that while they have overall positive experience, he can occasionally have a temper and be impatient/fastidious.  I thought I got along with him really well during campus visit, but I guess no professors would be short-tempered during visit weeks...

Since both have good funding and the lab atmosphere was nice in both, I'm not worried that much on those aspects. I'm just confused, how do people even know about personality only based on a few email/face-to-face conversation? I mean, I know that I'm not very socially 'astute' (I'm pretty bad at assessing people's character in a short span of time), but still, it's confusing that my first impressions happen to be the opposite of what people who already know the PIs say...

[TakeruK]

14 minutes ago, zhtmahtm said:

PI A: big name, reputation among students/faculty to be very clever and nice/caring. However, during school visit, I felt like the conversation kept on breaking off and it got awkward quite often (at least for me, I don't know how he thought of me).

PI B: renowned but less than PI A, students told me that while they have overall positive experience, he can occasionally have a temper and be impatient/fastidious.  I thought I got along with him really well during campus visit, but I guess no professors would be short-tempered during visit weeks...

I actually don't see any opposites here. For PI A, it's certainly possible for a person to be clever, nice/caring and also have awkward conversations. These things are not mutually exclusive, and I don't think awkward pauses in conversations means that they are not clever or not nice and caring. It's common for strangers thrown together for a 30 minute appointment to not always have things to say to continually fill the 30 minute period. 

For PI B, again, the traits are not mutually exclusive. When someone is "occasionally" like X, it means that if you just interact with them for a few days, you might not see "X". It's something that you would probably only experience if you did stay and work with them. As you said, things like this are hard to determine in a short visit.

This is because people are complex individuals and you can't fully describe a person with just a handful of adjectives! Someone who is described as nice/caring isn't nice and caring 100% of the time. So, I don't think you should be worrying that you have different first impressions of the professors that the students. Remember that you and the students have different perspectives because your interaction with the professor so far is very different than what the students have experienced.

I think you should trust yourself. If you feel that you can get along with the person, then that is what is important. Also remember that you are not trying to find the "perfect person"! You are looking for someone to be a good research mentor and a good boss to you. I think it's much more important to think about things like their expectations of their group members (e.g. do they expect students to respond to emails at 10pm at night? on weekends?). And, while you should trust yourself / your instincts the most, it's still useful to hear what current students have to say to also view their perspective. Multiple perspectives are important to see the whole picture, but you shouldn't weigh them all equally---what matters in the end is what you think of the professor, not what others think, so my opinion is that you should always weigh your own impression the most. Just use the other perspectives to fill in blind spots (e.g. the fact that the students say PI B is occasionally impatient is important because with such as a short visit, your blind spot is how the PI is the rest of the time). But everyone also gets impatient---it's important to find out what this means and whether or not this would affect your working relationship.