I have learned very well how to exercise my judgment skill. It is a skill that I developed at an early age as part of my family tradition. It is also a skill that has helped me make sense of experiences. Judgment often helps me make sense of what I encounter.
By putting experiences into categories, I find them easier to deal with. I have a well-tuned critical mind. It is a mind that can help me with shortcuts, but it also can cause me to move too quickly to judgment.
I find that I am highly capable of putting people into predetermined patterns of behavior and appearance. These categories have meaning for me and help me make my way through life. They are often based on and reinforced by my experiences. They also limit my ability to observe and react.
Judgment helps lay a foundation for my cognitive manner of understanding and help me determine how to react. I know how I might easily deal with a situation more efficiently if I see how something fits into my pat pattern of experience and consequences I am familiar with.
I think that judgment is like my own built-in form of Google. Anything new is measured against a life-long data storage that alerts me to whether the new is likely to be good for me or not so good. I judge whether it will be beneficial or harmful. Judgment is so much a part of my built-in psyche that it happens almost automatically unless I intervene.
I’ve had two experiences recently that have caused me to think about judgment and the role it plays in my reactions. At the Fair, I was standing in a long line at the Sweet Martha’s cookie booth, when a group of young women went up the exit aisle and proceeded to purchase many buckets of cookies. They were apparently Somali, and no one suggested they go to the end of the line, except the friend I was standing in line with.
My reaction was to suggest that I had experienced this kind of behavior in Somali individuals in the past, the demanding push to get what they want. Friends have simply called the behavior rude. For me, it reinforced my experience of pushy behavior, and probably set the foundation for future judgment.
This morning, I sat in a car dealership waiting room, for about half an hour, aware that a man with an “African” accent was all that time talking loudly on his cell phone. All 20 of us in the room could hear every word of his conversation. He was still talking when I left. I noticed that another man with dark skin was quietly and inaudibly talking on his phone. But it was the loud talker that will reinforce my categories and shape my judgment about what to avoid.
I am aware that the influences on my judgment categories are often more subtle, but they are also powerful to shape my future judgments unless I mindfully intervene. Judgment is a useful tool, but it requires considerable control and skill.