Understanding How We are Misjudged and can Misjudge Others

“People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for.”

Harper Lee
Novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner

This is important to remember this fact of human nature. When people’s minds are made up and strongly entrenched from life experiences, emotions, judgments, attitudes and convictions, it becomes difficult for them to see or hear differently from what they believe they are experiencing and what they believe. The Ladder of Inference is real. Confirmation bias is real.

Thinking errors and a rush to judgment are part of our humanness and can occur in different ways.

On one hand, with the halo effect (a bias), one or more traits of a person or thing lead someone or a group to come to a premature positive, inaccurate, conclusion of that person or thing.

On the other hand, with the horn effect (also a bias), a perception of someone or something can be significantly and poorly influenced by a single negative trait.

There is also the aforementioned Ladder of Inference, which explains much and provides clarity to what we face in the minds of others and how we too get derailed from accurate thinking. This can be explained in detailed and learned about here and here (highly recommended links).

Understanding how we are likely to think as part of the human race and especially as individuals with our experiences, cognitive patterns, beliefs, trigger points and emotional reactivity can be an eye opener and illuminating. Learning about ourselves can provide valuable, small insights into how other people might think. Learning about others can at times, if we think well on it, provide insight into ourselves.

Thus, it is a smart and worthwhile pursuit.

What can we do then to mitigate the probability of being misperceived and misjudged? Conducting ourselves in the highest-character manner (not really a big “ask”), which includes how we communicate verbally and non verbally and the actions we choose to take and not take, can be helpful.

Yet even then, this approach could still prove insufficient to preventing default premature judgment from others. The possibility remains present that others, like ourselves, can and will still err in mental processing.

While we can’t control how other people receive our presence and behavior, we can with discipline take great lengths to carry ourselves with poise, humility, grace, manners, compassion, character and honorable conduct.

By doing such we are not giving people an easy reason to jump to negative conclusions, especially if there is something about us, professionally or personally, that might make it natural to be prematurely and negatively judged, without our best selves or totality of who we are being fully recognized and respected.

It’s impossible to escape other people’s (and our own) confirmation bias yet it isn’t impossible to mitigate the likelihood of suffering on the sharp end of the sword end of it.

Michael Toebe helps individuals and organizations accurately analyze and wisely, more successfully respond to conflict and crisis that threatens or harms reputation. He writes Red Diamonds Essays and Reputation Specialist Essays (both published on the Medium platform) and has additionally written advisory for Chief Executive, Corporate Board Member, New York Law Journal, Corporate Compliance Insights, Physicians Practice and Training Industry. He publishes regularly on LinkedIn and beBee and is the voice and producer of the short-segment Red Diamonds Podcast.