It’s funny how sometimes you have to learn the same lessons over and over. Recently I’ve noticed a lesson that seems to keep showing up, people are not simple. By this I mean that by nature most people are inclined to label others based on a very small amount of time or exposure to them. A simple example is thinking that someone must be a complete idiot or moron because they cut you off on the freeway. Making such a snap decision about somebody is a natural reaction, it’s based on the emotion of the moment instead of a rational analysis.
When we step back and think about this it becomes pretty obvious, deciding "what" someone is based on thirty seconds of exposure to them makes no sense at all. Let’s put a technology spin on this, if you were reading an article that reviewed the latest version of TotallyNewCool OS only to find out that the person who wrote the review only spent thirty seconds looking at TotallyNewCool OS. The author of such an article would be laughed at across the web and Slashdot comments would ridicule them to no end.
So why is fighting the urge to make snap judgments so hard? One reason is that making snap judgments are simple. Maybe easy would be a better word. It requires the least amount of effort on our part to label people quickly. To really get to know someone takes time, certainly more than thirty seconds at any rate. Unfortunately these are things that are rarely (if ever) available in freeway cutoff example. If it’s possible, making the time and taking the effort would be the right thing to do.
I’ve left out an unspoken assumption, really getting to know people beyond simple snap judgments is worthwhile. When I’ve put aside simple labels and listened to people and got to know them I’m almost always impressed with what I’ve learned. On some occasions I’ve been amazed at what incredible people I initially labeled as complete write offs.
Now if only I can remember all this the next time someone cuts me off on the way to work 🙂