Judging Based on Appearance, Behavior, and Culture: The Danger

What gives you the right to judge someone by the way they look? Or the way they act? Or what culture or race they are? You don’t. No one does. But in the world we live in, where society’s opinions matter, we can’t help but to judge people by their appearance and behavior. It’s the subconscious part of our mind that makes judgments of the people around us who may be your friends or someone you have never seen before.

Judging is comparing someone with yourself. Sometimes it will make you feel good because you are better than them in comparison, other times it will make you feel worse because they contrast what you want to be.

Most behavior judgments stem from these three things: 1. You wouldn’t tolerate the same characteristic or behavior in yourself. If you are a shy and then encounter a very sociable person, your judgment about them might go something like this: “What a show-off, they are so loud “.

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This is because you may be embarrassed to act this way and therefore resent others doing it. 2. You display the same behavior you resent, and then complain about it to a friend. As you complain about what the friend has done, others might think to themselves “You are doing the same thing you find wrong”. This will then lead to people judging you on how you judge others when you are showing the same behavior.

All of these judgments create a divide between people, friends and the social classes.

Because of these judgments we tend to hang out with the same type of person because that’s where we ‘fit’. It’s human nature to unconsciously hang out with people who have the same behavior as us, because we feel safer and don’t feel pressure to be like our opposites. Until you get to know someone, who can’t make these judgments without sounding stereotypical. Princess Fiona says to Shrek “Well maybe you shouldn’t judge people before you got to know them”; because not everyone fits into that stereotypical category you put them in.

There is a lady over in Parker, Colorado named Amanda Hersh, who describes herself as “very heavily tattooed”. When Amanda’s friends heard she wanted to be physician, they scoffed and said you will never get in. Others expressed surprise. But Amanda was not only accepted into her first choice med school, the Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine, but in the top 10% of her class. Because of Amanda’s tattoos, she was judged that she wouldn’t succeed. Tattoos are thought about negatively. “People who drink, do drugs, have been jailed or do not believe in religion are more likely to have tattoos”.