I was flicking through the news headlines and while they are mostly clickbait titles, it got me thinking about the way we stereotype and use our experience to prejudge (prejudice) based on the information we have, and what we hold. As it is the news, there was a lot of various crime types of stories, and I went through an exercise of imagining the perpetrator, without knowing anything more than the crime.
Who are they - their profession, age, skin colour, sex, nationality and any other basic identifiers I could use to base my assumptions upon. These are obviously going to be coloured by culture, location and experience too, so what is "obvious" for one might not be the same for another. It is quite an interesting thought experiment if you give it a go. Here is a short list to get you started.
Shoplifter
Carjacker
Vandalism
People trafficker
Child abuse
Tax evasion
Rape
Embezzlement
Identity theft
Domestic violence
Cyber bullying
Child sex abuser
Now I wonder, if you went through that list and spent ten seconds on each, it would take about two minutes. And probably like me, as soon as you read the crime an image of the perpetrator starts to form in your mind's eye. Don't feel bad though - making judgements about others is a natural part of being human. We do it to assess risks and also to evaluate cooperation suitability.
The people who say they "don't judge" are liars. However, the problem with judging others is that it is never perfect, because nothing is. It is a heuristic, a rule of thumb, an assumption that is on a wide spectrum of accuracy. And often, we judge without ever getting any feedback on whether our judgement was correct at all. However, because our assessments are based on experience, we are going to favour one position over another, and that experience doesn't have to be direct experience. It can be third-party hearsay, or it can be cultural traditions, or the manipulations of the media that tint our opinions. But one thing we can be sure of when we judge.
We think we are as right as we can be, with what we have available to us.
It is again natural - because every decision we make is the best we can make at the time, otherwise we would have made a different one at that time, right? Yet, with feedback (experience) we are able to reflect on our decisions (and judgements) and see if we can learn something from the outcomes and whether the next time we are faced with similar, would we do something different.
When it comes to crimes themselves, we probably all have some experience with some of them, and based on that experience we build our representation of "the kind of person who would commit" one of them. It is a habitual process too, so if the more we see of a particular kind, the more we will be influenced to think of that kind. This is the same with any kind of habit building, as each instance is a vote for a behaviour, in this case that behaviour is a judgement.
Thought experiments like these are easy and fast to run, and can still deliver a lot of personal insight to reflect upon. What happens with them past that reflection is up to the individual, but for me and this one, it isn't about not judging, but a reminder to verify my judgements when possible. Too many these days are looking for fast information and it means that they are making their opinions without looking deeper. A headline becomes their position and more often than not, the headlines are designed for just that, to influence opinion, even if it is a misrepresentation of the facts.
The goal isn't to stop judging - it is to judge better. To become more accurate, and more granular, like a scientist who is able to test hypotheses. However, this isn't the only thing we have to do in our lives, so it also means that we are always going to have to deal with inaccuracies and errors in our judgement. And more importantly perhaps to consider - is we have to accept the inaccuracies of judgements of ourselves by others too. If we can't get it right, why do we expect strangers to get it right about us?
The knife cuts both ways.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
