Personally, I don’t think it is possible to perceive others without judging or categorizing them. I think when we initially meet someone we start categorizing them. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative thing, however, we can think that someone has a great sense of style when we first meet them and think that they may have money because of the way they dress but they in fact, may not be as wealthy as we think. I will be honest and say that when I first meet people, so many things run through my head. First I observe their demeanor, if they are not very approachable, I will automatically think they are rude or unkind. If they are nice, I will put more effort to carry on a conversation. I think this goes for everyone though, I have heard so many times, “When I first met you I thought you were this or that” without really getting to know me first. I think that first impressions go hand in hand with judging. Another example of this can be when you first meet someone who has a more revealing style of dress. People may automatically think she is easy or is dressing like that for attention, and although a lot of the times that may be true, we can’t really judge the type of person that they are just by the style of dress. I once, read an article about a famous violinist, Joshua Bell, who dressed as a bum and played the violin at a metro station and nobody, paid attention to him. A few days prior to that, he had a sold out performance where the tickets sold for an average of $100. This goes to show that we all judge when we first meet or see people that we do not personally know.
I think that in order to make to judgments more fair, we should first get to know the person and then have our opinions and judgments. This may sometimes be difficult because we all have a first impression of people even before they speak, but we should give them a chance to really get to know them before we start thinking negative thoughts. There have been times where I have judged people because of first impressions, but then we actually end up being great friends once I get to know them.
I agree with you!! “I think that first impressions go hand in hand with judging.” When you first meet someone, you are right off the back judging them on their first impression. It will decide if this is a person you would like to get to know better or stay far away from. Unfortunately a lot of people do not make good first impressions but are good people. And then there are those people who make GREAT first impression when they turned out to me something completely different. It is hard to base a person on a first impression but we cannot help it.
ReplyDeleteWe can make a first impression and judge a person based on so many things. The clothes they wear, where they live, of they smell good or not, the way they talk, everything about a person is used to judge them. It is very hard to perceive others without judging or categorizing them.