The Judge and Fudge

I always find it interesting when someone judges a person they do not know but are adamant that their judgement is clear and precise. Most people count themselves as pretty fair judges of character as most see it as an intuitive skill, unlike playing golf or mathematics. They think that their experiences combined with their mental ability are more often than not correct in their appraisal of others, even though they rarely check for clarification.

Snap judgements are made on those we do not know based on relatively arbitrary information such as clothing, colour or a few words overheard. A lot of judgement is created in the first few seconds of interaction and that judgement can carry on to influence all following judgements. First impressions matter they say, as they can last a lifetime.

Of course, first impressions can change over time if a person gets to really know the one they have judged, and this can of course swing either way between positive and negative. But, what about all of those judgements made where there is no further feedback available, where there is no follow-up?

In those cases, the person making the judgement walks away thinking they have judged well as there is no evidence to contradict the view. This means that their 'ability' to judge is continually reinforced without any justification. This is likely why many people feel that they are a good judge of character even though if they reviewed the times they have actually judged poorly, they may be no better than 50/50, or worse.

The worse comes because when someone thinks they are judging a situation well, they are more likely to become overly confident and invest more heavily into it. When this comes to the judgement of people, it can lead to some potentially very embarrassing situations where one will voice their judgement to someone who does actually know the person and find that their precision judgement tool is seriously flawed. This will often be excused away by one reason or another but, rarely do we learn.

In the next instance, we are all too willing to take a crack at judging another person without having ever re-calibrated our instrument, and again, we think we are correct. This means that we are continually failing in our judgments but perhaps due to the protection of our ego, we will not admit our shortcomings. So we fudge the books instead.

Like a dodgy accountant, we keep two sets of books. The one that tallies the correct against the incorrect judgment instances and the one that over-weighs the correct and excuses away the incorrect. Then we burn the reality and base our faith in our abilities on the fudged numbers.

We are of course very sensitive to the way we ourselves get judged however, and most are more than willing to correct the slightest flaw in someone's appraisal, if heard. If given the chance, we will defend ourselves against evaluations we deem incorrect and call it unfair if we must pay a price for another's poor judgement of us based on limited evidence.

This unfairness when personally experienced of course rarely translates into the view of the hypocrisy we ourselves deliver upon others as we make snap judgements time and time again. It seems that no matter how often our judgement is proved lacking, we continually hold onto the illusion we are inherently good judges of character.

The other issue is that we rarely consider the time frame of judgements as when we build a narrative of someone and then there is a large gap of time between, we carry the original view through to someone that may think and act in a very different manner now. Old school friends or enemies would be a good example of this where we apply our judgements of the past to people who have likely been influenced by a whole range of life changing experiences since we last evaluated them.

It is impossible for us not to judge others since as humans, it is part of our core wiring, but what is possible is a self-evaluation of our own habits and practices. If we can take an objective step back and catch the times we judge and could be wrong or, look at how we ourselves may be evaluated by others, perhaps we could better calibrate for precision.

But more importantly, maybe we could understand that our judgements are generalizations made on a limited view of the situation. The room for error is large, so perhaps we should hold off on the condemnation until we get feedback based on useful measures.

We all have the flu at the moment in my house and my daughter hasn't slept so well the last couple of nights. This means that we are also all overtired and perhaps a little grumpy or short-tempered. How does this affect our judgement ability? This is of course another flaw we forget to consider that our own current position is nearly always compromised by a host of biases and localised influences. Our judgement is nearly always impaired.

Over the years, I have been called many things, been judged in many different ways. Some have judged me fairly, many have not but that is only what I know of. Everyone I have ever interacted with has created some position on 'who I am', positions I will never know. This is the way it is and I have of course judged many also and have probably made a large number of errors over the time. We can all likely do much better than we do and it is good to think about and remember this occasionally.

Taraz
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