It is human nature to judge people. Using our judgment is actually an evolutionary survival tactic that has helped our species to survive thus far. But not all judgment is meant for survival. Sometimes, we judge simply because we do not understand.
If you’re a psychology major, then you are more than accustomed to taking a step back from the situation and analyzing it from a well-rounded and integrative perspective. You judge a situation slowly, considering any and all factors that could have played a role in a person’s behavior. A person’s thoughts, emotions, or actions are always the end result of a handful of components mixing together in such a way that result in the situation lying before you.
Our interpretations of people or situations are sometimes so instant that we don’t even realize we have jumped to conclusions. Our brains are so hard-wired to quickly analyze everything we are confronted with, that we are somewhat unaware of how judgmental we actually are.
As you walk the halls of your school, or stroll the aisles of a department store, you are confronted with an influx of people and stimuli. Your mind wants to make sense of it all, and combined with your social and cultural norms, you quickly form an opinion on a person’s character before considering why they appear the way they do or why they are exhibiting the behavior that they are.
The biggest message that I have taken away with me from the various avenues of psychology that my major has exposed me to is that one single theory or factor cannot fully explain a person’s behavior. It is a constant interaction between the person’s genetics, environment, experiences, and cultural and social norms that result in his or her behavior.
The problem is that we usually are not aware of a person’s full back-story. How would we know his or her genetic make-up or parent-child attachment style? How would we know what a person’s family structure is like or what mental illnesses they are dealing with? How would we know how all of these details interacted together to form the present? All we see is the image before us, so our perception and interpretation is wildly distorted and uninformed. As a psychology major, I do not have a magic crystal ball that uncovers a person’s history. What I do have, however, is the ability to realize that everything is not always what it seems. And while I am not immune to judging on a whim, I make it a point to take a step back and consider a more integrated understanding of why a person is the way he or she is. With that, I find that I do not write someone off as quickly as I used to. Maybe it is my desire to be a compassionate person, or maybe it is my parent’s tuition dollars paying off. Either way, my psychology major has certainly made me less condemnatory.
