Is Psychological Judgement Mentally Automatic and Unavoidable?

By BRIGID OBRIEN

Throughout the day, a single individual will make a plethora of judgments about a person on the
street, a coworker, or a peer. People often make judgements on physical appearance and on how
people present themselves, among other things. Can we change our judgemental state of minds?
If an individual is acting judgemental, does it mean that they have a negative mindset? Or is
judgement merely a cognitive reflex? Understanding the psychology of social judgement and
snap judgment can help explain these neurobiological tendencies.

There are numerous types of psychological judgement. Social judgement is pervasive among
humanswho subconsciously do the judging, or get judgedconstantly. Whether a person has
known someone for a day or a year, they form judgements about things such as appearance or
personality. The website P sychology Campus explains in their article Social Judgement that
social judgement is connected to two concepts that are loosely known as observable judgement
and internal judgement. Observable judgement is assuming something about a human from
their posture, facial expression, clothing, etc. We can actually see and observe these physical
things.

Internal judgement, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated. This type of judgement occurs
when a human makes an inference about someone's personality, loyalty, and love all mental
states of mind which are not externally observable. To form a internal judgement, someone
would make an inference about another person from an assumption. When Sarah looks at
Morgan, she sees that Morgan is smiling at her. She therefore assumes that Morgan genuinely
likes her, when Morgan could be smiling at Sarah and loathing her existence. Most of us learn
to control or manipulate many of the cues we show to others in order to hide our internal state.

Thus, we say Fine thanks. when asked How are you? even when we are sometimes far from
fine, Psychology Campus reports. Essentially, both types of judgement are from assumptions,
but observable judgment is more likely to be closer to the truth than internal judgement.

In addition to these two concepts, the subconscious actions of filtering and inference are a large
part of social judgement. With respect to filtering, people tend to ignore much of what they
see, writes Psychology Campus. With inference, people tend to go beyond the evidence in
front of them and complete the picture that they filtered or did not see. When an individual
filters their observations of others, the brain is kept from being overwhelmed with information.
An inference fills the gaps in the brain of unknown information. This tends to happen if someone
is over-analyzing a persons friendliness and actions, especially if they subconsciously want the
person to feel a certain way towards them like a crush.
Scientists understandings of judgement continue to grow more nuanced with additional
research. Scientific Americans article Mixed Impressions: How We Judge Others on Multiple
Levels, written by Marina Krakovsky, evaluates social psychologist Amy Cuddy, Susan Fiske,
and Peter Glicks findings of judgement and how we perceive people explicitly when when
we first meet them. When we meet a person, we immediately and often unconsciously assess
him or her for both warmth and competence, she writes. Krakovsky also explored a study
conducted by Nicolas Kervyn and his colleagues, who discovered that if a person is perceived as
warm, they are therefore seen as less competent, and vise versa. If an individual is seen as
competent, they are seen as cold rather than warm. People who are judged as competent but
coldincluding those in stereotyped groups such as Jews, Asians and the wealthyprovoke
envy and a desire to harm, as violence against these groups has often shown. And people usually
seen as warm but incompetent, such as mothers and the elderly, elicit pity and benign neglect,
Krakovsky explains. Many of these stereotypes could pertain to a certain group more than
another, depending on race, gender, class, point of view, etc.
Rapid social judgement specifically when we meet someone new is defined as snap
judgement. Snap judgement is a subcategory of social judgement. It happens subconsciously,
and can even take precedent over rational mind. The article Snap Judgments Decide a Face's
Character,

Psychologist Finds written by Chad Boutin from News at Princeton writes that

Princeton University psychologist Alex Todorov has found that people respond intuitively to
faces so rapidly that our reasoning minds may not have time to influence the reaction and that
our intuitions about attraction and trust are among those we form the fastest. Todorov goes on
to explain that his five psychological experiments display that we are hardwired to make snap
judgements, although he is not sure why the brain automatically makes quick and sometimes
irrational assumptions. His studies suggest that the part of the brain that reacts to judgement and
trust is called the amygdala. The fear response involves the amygdala, a part of the brain that
existed in animals for millions of years before the development of the prefrontal cortex, where
rational thoughts come from, Todorov states. He continues to explain his observations imply
that trust may be a case of high level judgement, and that the signal may bypass the cortex
altogether. This confusing psychologist talk essentially boils down to this: trust and judgement
are neurobiological, skipping over the rational part of our brains, therefore worsening our ability
to form logical assumptions about an individual right away.

Interestingly enough, snap judgement studies also indicate that we instinctively make
assumptions about an individual from animalistic instincts. Our non-verbal indications including
posture and facial expressions originate back to these natural tendencies. Amy Cuddy, social
psychologist and professor of business administration at Harvard University is one of the

psychologists studying the warmth and competence factor of social judgement. She explains
these instincts in The Psyche on Automatic, written by Craig Lambert in the Harvard Magazine.
In the article, Cuddy says that perceptions of competence are often from physical assumptions.
In all animal species, postures that are expansive, open, and take up more space are associated
with high power and dominance, Cuddy says. Postures that are contractive--limbs touching
torso, protecting the vital organs, taking up minimal space are associated with low power,
being at the bottom of the hierarchy. These instinctual postures directly connect to judgement
and assumptions in the 21st Century. If an individual is slouching or folding their arms we see
them as nervous and/or scared, trying to hide and protect themselves. Contrarily, if an individual
is sitting up straight and keeping their arms away from their body we see them as confident.

The accumulation of multiple psychological studies and experiments concerning social

judgement and snap judgement answers the seemingly complex question - is judgement
automatic and natural, and is it possible to change our judgemental state of minds?
Neurobiologically, an individual is prone to making social or snap judgements. As time passes
and you get to know people, you, of course, develop a more rounded conception of them. But
because we make these judgments without conscious thought, we should be aware of what is
happening when we look at a person's face, describes psychologist Alex Todorov.
Consequently, it seems that people have the ability to be mentally aware, and therefore can
realize that they are making a (sometimes illogical) snap judgement. If this is acknowledged, an
individual is capable of changing their assumptions and keeping an open mind. Todorov
optimistically concludes that quick first impressions can be overcome by the rational mind.

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