Written By:Tosin Ajogbeje/Date:2021–05–09
“Each man judges well the things he knows,” says Aristotle. Knowing that we are all unique, we are often tempted to make snap judgements about the lives of others without understanding the situation. Research claims a major causality for judging others rather than mindfully processing information is linked to the attribution theory. This theory was originally developed by Austrian Psychologist, Fritz Heider to delve into the mechanisms by which people will evaluate to make sense of both their own behaviour and that of others. In this context, everyone judges from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they get out into the world and then back home. This is real life.
Let’s explore this further. We are continually consuming information shared online and in reality, and then it makes it more inevitable to stop rebuking people. In just a few seconds, we form opinions and make accusations without knowing the person. Can we call this human nature or perspective taking? People prefer to find faults in others and try to make sense of other people’s decision to act or behave in a certain way.
Research cites two types of attributions people make about others’ behaviour:
- Situational Attributions: This occurs when people believe a person’s behaviour is as a result of something in their present situation. For example, an employee might have acted a little bit rude because she was exhausted with work or presumably, she is experiencing some sort of financial difficulty.
- Personality Attributions: Now with this, people tend to blame someone else based on their character and personality. When people make attributions, they believe the behaviour is due to the person’s personality. For example, if the same employee mentioned above is spiteful and bad-tempered, people could judge the employee based on these personalities.
Personality attributions are more long-lasting as it is entrenched in our daily lives. For example, if we greet or say hello to the same people every day and we don’t often get any feedback from them, some form of judgement could occur here. What do I mean? We could assert that they are hostile and make personality attributions about them or see them as bad people. Situational reasons could also occur here as we could give them a benefit of the doubt and consider that they were having a bad day. Likewise, research adds that people mostly judge others based on how well they treat other people and how capable they are at accomplishing their goals. In this case, people tend to judge someone’s skillfulness, intelligence, ethics, and charisma, including other attributes. Moving forward, it would be much prudent to avoid criticizing others because we have no clue what journey they are embarking on. The realistic point here is that we have no idea about people’s past, present and future, making it unfair to condemn and place impractical responsibility on that person. Research claims that people who judge others might feel the impact of making those judgements in that it enhances their own self-image and ego. However, those who judge people might fail to accept responsibility for their own failures and mistakes. The bottom line here is that when you judge someone, you will indirectly disregard your own flaws. When one hasn’t walked in someone’s shoes, it would be much reasonable to learn to understand them rather than change them. If people are not harmful and cause problems in people’s lives, then judging them does us no good. Every person is unique and of course has something special to offer the world.
References
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/conscious-communication/201805/why-we-judge-others
https://medium.com/predict/attribution-theory-cee035612da1
http://socialpsychonline.com/2016/10/judging-people-psychology/
