Have You Been Judging People Based On Their Look?

Whenever we see or meet someone, we always form a first impression of that

person. The first impression can be based on gender, appearance, clothes or the
body shape of the person. This is from where we start stereotyping people. This
happens because we are conditioned to think in a way and it is very hard to
unlearn but that is the challenge that all of us should overcome. We all know
that looks matter. What most of us don’t understand is, how much looks matter,
and how difficult it is for us to ignore a person’s appearance when making a
social judgment? I’m not talking just about romantic relationships, I’m talking
about all our human interactions. And by appearance, I’m not talking simply
about the “beauty,” dimension, but also of many other qualities of one’s
appearance.

"Never judge a book by its cover." This is a phrase which all of us would have
heard. It implies that a person cannot be judged on personal or academic
grounds based on his external appearance alone.

In all our perceptions, from vision to hearing, to the pictures we build of

people’s character, our unconscious mind starts from whatever objective data is
available to us – usually spotty – and helps to shape and construct the more
complete picture we consciously perceive. In order to offer us this more
complete picture, our unconscious employs clever tricks and educated guessing
to fill in some blanks. In our perception of people, and their perceptions of
us, the hidden, subliminal mind takes limited data, and creates a picture that
seems clear and real, but is actually built largely on unconscious inferences that
are made employing factors such as a person’s body language, voice, clothing,
appearance, and social category.I will explain with the help of common examples.

“Beauty and beast” and “Snow white and seven dwarfs” are two stories that are
almost known by everyone. Although there are fables, there is deep meaning
inside them. What you can learn from them is that people that are not so good-
looking can be very good internally. Napoleon is a very short guy, but he was one
of the most famous in the history. Theodore Roosevelt, former US president
during World War II, is handicapped; but he is one of the most successful
presidents in American history. So how can you tell about the people from their
external appearance? And actually there are tons of examples in reality.
Many men would rather choose a woman with a common face than a good-looking
one. Because they know the virtue of a woman is more important than her outer
appearance. A great deal of couples who go hand in hand for their life attribute
their happy marriage to loving the other’s inner quality instead of loving a pretty
face. In business, a boss would never judge his employee by their external
appearances; instead what he concerns would be their capability, their assiduity,
and their performance. A person with bad appearances but good performance
will more likely be promoted than another one with good appearances but bad
performance.

I agree with the title statement because a person’s inner quality is much more
important than his external appearances. Whether a person looks good or bad
looks good or bad cannot be decided by him. A man’s external appearances are
born and generally cannot be changed. But everyone can improve his inner quality
by his own efforts. In fact I would say every human being is special in
themselves and should not be compared ever with anyone. Dipika Priya