This week we explored prejudices further with two questions.
The first is: Why do we judge?
Judging can be seen, at its most basic level, as a survival mechanism. It allows people to quickly gain a working understanding of new situations and new people. It highlights any physical or abstract differences in someone or something in the judging person’s mind, and thus it highlights potential dangers as well. At a more superficial level, judging people is a way to make yourself feel better about attributes that you don’t like in yourself.
I believe judging is based on both unconscious and conscious experiences in a person’s life, as well as personal beliefs held about oneself.
As an example of judging in relation to a person’s own conscious experiences, my wife used to have a cherry tree at the bottom of her garden when she was a toddler. One day, she went off down the garden and ate far too many cherries and made herself sick. She cannot face eating cherries to this day. This was a very conscious and very physical experience for her, and has left its mark. The mental association is then that if you eat too many cherries, you get sick. The brain, wanting to survive, does not like the body being sick, so it forms an aversion to cherries or anything that tastes or smells like cherry. From that point on, regardless of whether something cherry-flavoured tastes good, she has the prejudice that cherries, and indeed anything to do with cherries, is bad, and should be avoided.
The origins of unconscious judgments are harder to pinpoint, as the influences would be more subtle, and there probably wouldn’t be a physical experience either. Physical experiences tend to be very memorable as visceral bodily feelings and intense emotions stick with a person. Also, because the influences are taken in unconsciously, you will probably not remember forming a particular opinion. If, when you were young, you were repeatedly told that men with beards are not nice to kiss then you will grow up thinking that men with beards are not nice to kiss. Despite having never kissed a man with a beard yourself before, you have made the judgement that men with beards are not nice to kiss, and that you would not want to form a romantic relationship with him regardless of all his other positive traits.
Personal happiness in relation to self-perception is also a reason people make judgements. Envy in particular can cause a person to make horrible judgements about others. This can temporarily alleviate the original bad feelings of envy somewhat, but they will come back stronger, again and again, unless the person faces the root of their problem. Over time, this potentially leads to other negative feelings such as hate or resentment, and even undesirable behaviours such as self-harm or spiteful violence. Acknowledging that differences exist, exploring your own personal beliefs and assumptions and being more open-minded all help develop self-awareness and compassion, and is a positive way out of a harmful cycle.
The second question is: What do we judge?
We judge characteristics in people ranging from physical, obvious and visible, to abstract, silent and subjective. These include physical characteristics such as age, gender, race, height, weight, hair style, hair colour and even the amount of hair a person has (or not). They also include the size and appearance of various body parts (for example muscular upper arms or large, fat thighs), any visible skin conditions, birthmarks or scar tissue, whether someone has tattoos, body piercings or other body modifications, their level of physical ability and whether they are visibly disabled in any way (physically or mentally), the style in which they dress and how they present themselves.
We also judge people on their marital status, whether they are pregnant or not, whether they are parents or not, whether they are carers or not, what their religious views are, their perceived mental health level, their actual mental health level, whether they have a job or two jobs or three jobs or no job at all, what their job is, who they work for, how their voice sounds, how they talk, what opinions they hold, how they stand or sit, what their body language says, their sexual preferences, their political beliefs, the football team they support, their hometown, their parents, their friends, the people they associate with in general, and their status within society. Factors also include someone’s personal tastes, their opinions, their likes and dislikes, their possessions, their home and where they live, the car they drive… It really is endless.
Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”. This shows that excessive judging can lead to complexes or inaccurate beliefs.
To summarise, prejudice does have some use as it allows you to categorise things or people quickly and easily, so your brain has a nice little box to place the thing or person while you get to know them better. But that is a key aspect; they should only be used initially – It is unwise to make judgements and then rigidly stick to those judgements. These things are rarely set in stone, and as you get to know a person you will see those assumptions lift like a veil of fog, and their true attributes shine through. Try and be open-minded. Question any pre-conceived ideas you may have, and explore why you may think the way you do. Catching judgements before you act on them is also helpful.
