I think it is impossible to perceive others without judging or categorizing them in some way. According to Trenholm, we judge people daily using person prototypes (geek) and personal constructs (attractive, childish). Human beings have a natural instinct to judge so we can decide if our response should be fight or flight. We use our perceptions to better understand someone and to build relationships based on these perceptions. Our society often creates and perpetuates negative stereotypes naively, which often leads to unfair discrimination.
We all need to be more conscious of how we perceive others and should not be quick to judge or categorize people, since it can affect our relationship with someone negatively. We need to become more mindful when we process information and more active listeners. When we judge people based on their looks or how they communicate, we are limiting what that person is capable of and hence see them for what we want to see. In order to make my judgments fair, I try not to be quick to judge someone without learning all the details and re-evaluate my perceptions accordingly. Human interaction is an interesting and delicate subject and we need to be careful about putting people into a “box.”
Hey Sunshine:
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your position about the impact judgments can have on our perceptions of others. You wrote, "we are limiting what that person is capable of and hence see them for what we want to see." I find a raw truth in this statement in terms of who has power and access once a person is categorized and “limited” in their capabilities. And, as you mentioned, experiences become something on “our terms” (i.e., the person making the judgement[s]) without regard for the other person. For example, last night I went to the dance recital of a colleague’s daughter at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. After, she came up to me and said, “Stace, did you see the girl…the one who is blind AND deaf?! Did you see her?! Did you see her dance?! She was sooo good, right?!” Now, I know I reflected then on seeing this young girl dance (and perform beyond the stereotyping of most of the audience), but reading your post has prompted me to reflect even further on what Eloisa’s judgments were and what limits she may have placed on the girl’s potential to dance “as good as the rest” of the performers. And, not to mention, my own.
(: gunnerisfunner
Hey Gunnerisfunner,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. What a great example you brought up with Eloisa's judgments on a disabled person. We are all limited only by what others see in us!!!
I also believe it’s impossible to perceive others without judging or categorizing—it’s human nature: we take the things we know and use them to understand things we do not know. Many times we can be right, but there are also times that our inferences were wrongly formed. Like you said, it’s important to gather more information about a person before we judge them. I find that when I judge to quickly without enough facts, I tend to interpret future information differently in order to fit my judgments of this person. For example, if I decided that a person was snooty, then I’m more likely to interpret future experiences like her lack of conversation to fit my judgment, rather than think of other possibilities, like she might just be shy.
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